With no end in sight

I know I had promised last week an imaginary phone conversation between President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and a possible U.S. President Donald Trump for this article. But sometimes events take over, and that is what happened this time. After all, we have all the U.S. primaries ahead of us to speculate, don't we? So let us come back to our jungle, the Syrian crisis.

Turkey started a ground attack over the weekend on some Syrian targets where it saw movement among People's Defense Units (YPG) and/or Bashar al-Assad troops. The critical target is the town of Azez. It is an interesting place to bomb. Four years ago when I was able to walk over the landmined fields of olive trees and pay 100 dollars to anyone with a car to drive us, I managed to enter Azez. Illegally that is. Even then, there were very few inhabitants there. Syrians had packed their cars, pickup trucks and even motorcycles and had started leaving the village. There were two big regime tanks that were blown to pieces. There was a huge military intelligence building that had become the target of clashes. Al-Nusra was the "hip thing" in town. They were even controlling the Turkish border. 

So, now Turkey is so unhappy with al-Assad forces or Kurds controlling this unmanned town that it is shelling it day and night. Turkey's prime minister is making statements like "we will not let it fall into regime hands" as if it is a town of Turkey. Falling? Falling where? It would be foolish to remind Mr. Ahmet Davutoglu of the word "territorial integrity," but unfortunately Azez and so many other places are still in Syria, as far as I know.

Turkey could have closed the border three years ago if it was so eager for a no-fly zone, or a secure zone. Turkey could have acted more decisively to...