[quote]On May 11, 2013, Reyhanli, a Turkish town on the border with Syria, was attacked with twin car bombs, leaving behind an official toll of 52 deaths and 146 injuries. ut the mystery of who attacked Reyhanli, marking the worst terrorist attack this country has ever seen, remained controversial. Here is why: On May 25, 2013, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the Syrian regime of being behind this attack. Also, referring to a visit by a group of main opposition Republican People’s Party deputies to a Damascus meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Erdogan said in an accusatory tone, “We have documents in our hands that clearly prove that those who took the CHP members to Assad are those who were directly involved in the Reyhanli attack.”[/quote]Very interesting. I wonder if this raises the chances of Turkey being involved in the fight against al-Qaeda and/or whether they stop allegedly supporting al-Nusra in Latakia. Only time will tell. I'm too tired right now to do a full-scale analysis.

[quote]Interior Minister Efkan Ala has announced that a third assailant has been captured, following a suspected al-Qaeda attack on a gendarmerie unit in the Central Anatolian province of Niğde on March 20, which left three dead and five injured. Two of the assailants, 18-year-old E.S. and E.A, were Albanian citizens, while 23-year-old Ç.R was a citizen of Kosovo, although all were speaking Arabic, according to reports.[/quote]Two Albanians and one Kosovaran members of ISIS or al-Qaeda were arrested after an attack on Turkish police. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/turkey-tomb-suleiman-shah-syrian-territory-pretext-incursion.html# Turkish tomb in Syria becomes flashpoint for conflict [quote]When I was a child, Turkish soldiers guarding the Tomb of Suleiman Shah in the foothills of Jabel Fortress used to carry their water from the Euphrates River on donkey back to their base. They were putting the water in tin cans without lids. We used to throw pebbles at the donkeys. Startled, they jumped about and spilled their water and we laughed. The soldiers did not react too much. One day when we were throwing pebbles with three of my cousins, my father caught us. I was punished by two days' confinement to the house.” This is a flashback of Saad Abdunnur abu Basil’s childhood around the Tomb of Suleiman Shah, the only sovereign Turkish territory inside Syria. The tomb, put under Turkish custody as stipulated by the 1921 Treaty of Ankara with the French, is on the agenda as a potential pretext for Turkey to mount a cross-border operation into Syria. The case of the video recording of a threat by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham [ISIS] was circulated on the Internet. The Internet message said: “We are giving you three days [to evacuate] the soldiers in this tomb which is on the Islamic land of Aleppo. Or, we will raze the tomb.”[/quote]This is interesting because Turkey is saying any ISIS attack on this tomb would justify a Turkish intervention in Syria. Even more worrying, this could potentially be the rise of a wider war.

Turkey's ISIS Problem [quote]On March 27 an audio tape recording of high-level Turkish officials discussing Turkey's Syria strategy was leaked on YouTube. The meeting was held between Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu, Deputy Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff Yasar Guler, and Hakan Fidan, the head of the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT). The leak went viral on social media due to Fidan's alleged proposal to stage an attack to justify future Turkish military operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) in Syria. President Abdullah Gul condemned the leak over national security concerns, and YouTube was banned in Turkey after the leak.[/quote]