According to a recent New York Times article Turkey appears to have considered using a false flag operation to drum up public support for attacking Syria. If true – and the statement from the Foreign Ministry mentioned below seems to indicate that is the case – this is one more reason to be careful in accepting drumbeats to war. For other examples, see this blog’s series on Avoiding Needless Wars. The first installment on the first Gulf of Tonkin incident has links to the other nine at the end. Here’s the gist of the Times article:
On Thursday morning, a recording was posted on YouTube in which … [Turkey’s top spy chief, the foreign minister and his deputy, and a top military official] were heard discussing a plot to establish a justification for military strikes in Syria. One option that is said to have been discussed was orchestrating an attack on the Tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, which is in northern Syria and is considered by the government here to be Turkish territory. … In a statement, the Foreign Ministry acknowledged the security meeting but said that “certain parts” of the recording had been distorted, though it did not say which parts. The ministry confirmed that the officials discussed measures to be taken to defend the tomb in Syria, but did not acknowledge that Turkey was looking to provoke an attack to justify a Turkish military operation.
Defusing the Nuclear Threat 