Turkey, Syria and the Kurds: There Goes the Neighborhood

GTE Commentary (Istituto Affari Internazionali) No. 6, 19 November 2012, 3 p

by Piotr Zalewski *

On 3 October 2012, a mortar shell fired from Syria landed in the small Turkish border town of Akçakale, killing two women and three children. It was not the first time that an errant shell had landed on Turkish soil since the beginning of Syria’s civil war, and it was not to be the last. Over the ensuing weeks, Turkey and Syria were to trade artillery fire on almost a daily basis, leaving the erstwhile allies on the brink of armed conflict, and prompting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to declare that his country was ready, even if not particularly eager, for war.

* Piotr Zalewski is the Turkey correspondent for Polityka, a Polish news magazine. His work has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The National, TheAtlantic.com, Insight Turkey, and Turkish Policy Quarterly.

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