At the end of the December a Turkish air strike killed 35 civilians, the oldest of whom was 20, in a Kurdish village near the border with Iraq, the largest amount of Kurdish civilians killed by Turkish forces in one day in Ankara's 28-year counterinsurgency campaign. The victims had been identified - hence targeted - by a drone.
The Turkish military has continued drone-aided air strikes in Iraq this year.
It is patently obvious that Turkey is on the verge of repeating its Iraq policy in Syria. Unlike Iraq, though, air strikes and incursions by troops and armored vehicles in Syria will meet with a different response than they have in Iraq. That is, they will meet with a response.
As did the Turkish F-4 fighter jet that flew over Syrian territory and was shot down in June, leading to Turkey seeking NATO assistance under Article 4 provisions.
The first Turkish warplane that drops a bomb or fires a missile on Syrian territory will provoke a reaction far more severe than the violation of Syrian airspace in June.
With the "humanitarian intervention" and "weapons of mass destruction" ploys not having succeeded in provoking a war between Turkey - and through Turkey NATO - and Syria, exploiting the Kurdish "terrorist" subterfuge may be the next, perhaps at last successful, attempt to do so.
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