Too Important To Be Left To the Generals

By ANDREW FINKEL

Groucho Marx as Prime Minister Rufus. T. Firefly in the 1933 film “Duck Soup.”

ISTANBUL – Having been introduced to international diplomacy by the Marx Brothers in “Duck Soup,” I cannot but view Turkey’s current crisis with Syria with unease. In that 1933 film, Groucho (aka Rufus T. Firefly) swaps finely tuned insults with the ambassador of Sylvania until he famously cries: “This means war!” When the ambassador pleads that he will do anything to avoid conflict, Firefly replies: “I’ve already paid a month’s rent on the battlefield.”

He might have paid a year’s worth if Sylvania had done like Syria last week and shot down without warning an RF-4E military jet that had skidded in and out of its airspace and then taken pot shots at other aircraft searching for wreckage. Damascus says the incident was a regrettable reflex. Ankara says the electronic chatter proves it was a deliberate affront.

Does this mean war? Not yet. Yes, Syria’s implosion could degenerate into a regional conflict involving Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and maybe even Russia. And yes, Turkey has summoned other NATO members to discuss the threat to its national security under Article 4 of the alliance’s treaty. But the odds that these tensions with Syria will trigger Article 5 and require NATO to respond in collective self-defense are basically nonexistent: The last and only time that article was invoked was in response to 9/11. Neither Turkey nor the rest of NATO is looking for a fight.

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There is still no news of the two Turkish pilots who went down some 13 nautical miles from the Syrian shore. But the damage to Turkey’s pride is already evident. Ankara had been pursuing what might be described as a more dynamic and independent foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. In 2004, and to the surprise of its Western allies, it tried to woo Bashar al-Assad to get Syria off the axis of evil. Now it is openly calling for an end to Assad’s regime and is providing refuge to its army deserters and civilian refugees. The Turkish government clearly believes it is doing the right thing and is on the side of history. The last thing it expected was to get a bloody nose for probing Syrian airspace.

Which might explain why Ankara was slow to react to the incident on Friday. Its first comment was not a formal declaration by a member of the government but a tweet by the governing AK Party’s vice chairman in charge of foreign affairs.