Turkey's military operation in Syria

It all started with headlines depicting Turkish armored vehicles and tanks crossing the Syrian border accompanied by hundreds of soldiers. At first, no one understood the reason or scope of the military operation. Some thought Turkey was on the verge of war with its armed forces in Syria. There was also a total blurring of the facts as some thought it was a major frontal attack on the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and others feared it was another clash between the Turkish Army and the Kurdish militias. It then became clear that the military intervention was limited in time and space. It took almost nine hours for an operational force to travel 35 kilometers inside Syrian territory, to secure the Tomb of Süleyman Shah, the Honor Guard protecting it and the Turkish flag and then to move the military personnel and the tomb to safety.

The government declared that all forces in the region, including the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and ISIS, had been notified of the operation and were warned to stay away. The Syrian government had also been notified 24 hours prior to the operation. The Tomb of Süleyman Shah is recognized as Turkish territory due to a treaty signed between the Ankara government of what was to become the Turkish Republic and France when it was the colonial ruler of Syria. This piece of land, the size of a football pitch, has already been moved twice due to the construction of dams that flooded the tomb's previous locations. This time, the tomb's location was under threat from ISIS, and the suggestion to remove all the soldiers along with the remains had been on the table for a while.

So why the sudden rush? A number of reasons of varying importance and weight can be given. First of all, by abducting the personnel of Turkish Consulate in Mosul, ISIS neutralized the power to act of Turkey's military forces bordering Syria. It took months of dangerous negotiations for Turkey to arrange for its diplomatic personnel to be freed. Recently, the setbacks suffered by ISIS fighters inflicted by Kurdish militia, supported by air raids conducted by the coalition, has pushed ISIS into an entrenched position, and it is possible that a new hostage operation against Turkey was in the air.

Last, but definitely not least, the U.S. administration, after months of prevarication, has finally decided to train and arm thousands of members of the Free Syrian Army on Turkish soil. This is the only force that envisages establishing a democratic regime in Syria, and so it is the arch nemesis of ISIS. This fact would explain why it was no longer possible for Turkey to keep almost 40 elite soldiers 40 kilometers outside its borders in a location militarily indefensible. Thus there was a dire need to remove this symbolic site to the relative safety of a location bordering Turkey. This makes sense regarding international law as well as marking it as a clever and far-sighted diplomatic move.

What should be mentioned is the fact that Turkey could have conducted a small-scale airborne operation to achieve the same purpose. But it chose to organize a visible, almost "en fanfare," military maneuver. This could also be taken as a message sent to all fighting factions, that Turkey remains the only real military power in the region to have such maneuvering capabilities, and that it did not need any endorsement from other international players.

It was neatly wrapped up, with the accidental death of a military cameraman the only black mark on the picture. A message was sent and it seems to have been understood, so long as not a single shot was fired.