Analyst: "Syria's operations close to the border could spark clashes with Turkey"

Turkey will not merely sit and watch if Syrian army forces close to the Syrian-Turkish border start killing civilians in front of its eyes, according to one analyst. "Remember (in the 1990s) when NATO was accused by the international media and public of not being able to prevent 8,000 Muslim Bosnians from being murdered in front of the world's eyes?" asked Veysel Ayhan of the Ankara-based Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM). "As a member of NATO and a country whose border is about to witness such a massacre by the Syrian army, Turkey will not allow such a thing to happen again, especially before its own eyes." Recent visits to the border region by top Turkish political and military officials to see Syrian refugees and the situation firsthand send a clear and serious message to Syria that Turkey will not close its eyes to the killings of civilians at its door, said Ayhan. "Yet I have doubts about how much of those messages will be understood by the other side," he added.