Report: 40 dead in Turkey car bombings near Syria

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey's interior minister says the death toll in the explosions in a town across the border from Syria is around 40, according to private NTV television.

Muammer Guler said Saturday around 100 other people were injured in the two car bomb explosions and that 29 of them are in serious condition.

The blasts raised fears that Syria's brutal civil war violence was crossing into its neighbor, but Turkey's prime minister hasn't ruled out that it could be related to peace talks with Kurdish rebels.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/several-hurt-blasts-near-turkish-syrian-border

If this is Syrian blowback, Turkey may have taken it's first step to becoming another Pakistan.

Video of immediate aftermath <warning graphic scenes>

I think it is safe to say at this point that some national boundaries will be changing.

It leaves the Palestinians out in the cold, and pretends that Sunni Syria and Jordan are homogenously Sunni.

They're not. There'd obviously be a bit of a division between urban moderates and rural/village Salafis. It's likely that Anbar in Iraq would feel more affinity with eastern Syrians than with many in Damascus. There'd be population dislocations, but nothing that we haven't seen lead to peace before--if we let them happen.

That particular split wasn't that obvious in Syria before. Now it is. The question is, Will the splitting happen before it's impossible to implement that division or later. My guess is later, which using Peters' methodology would lead to a more or less combined Shuro-Iraq state.

Peters' methodology isn't all bad. We complain about how horrible imperialist/colonialist-drawn borders are and how borders should reflect national or ethnic boundaries. Then we insist on the sanctity of imperialist/colonialist drawn borders, especially when they're drawn by non-Western imperialists/colonialists like the Persians or the Turks--both expansion empires that cling to conquered peoples and territories and have active relocation/forced-assimiliation campaigns. With "progressive" blessing.

it will be all over for Bashar.

Their military has a well-deserved reputation.

I have been wondering how the Syrian people would react to an invasion and occupation (atleast temporary) by Turkey..
infact, I still am....
I mean, if any of its neighbors were going to do it... it would be best if it were them...

Certainly some would welcome it, since it would bring an end to the current civil war.

But then there's the question about what Turkey's post-conflict role would be, with the different religious and political factions attempting to control the country.

Hostility towards Turkey might then become manifest if the Turks remained in Syria as a peacekeeping force, since Syria was under the domination of the Ottomans for centuries. People in the region have long memories.

What might end up is a political partitioning of Syria (much like post-WWII Germany), with the Turks in charge of the region around their border, the Jordanians in the south, a coalition of other Arab military forces in the east, and an international coalition along the Lebanese/Israeli border.

in charge of anything after I found out who the opposition the U.S. calls the legitimate Government of Syria is. The head of the opposition is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Texas and the number two man is a Christian. That is why they can't get their act together. It suggests to me this was a Foreign plot by neocons. I don't support this crap even more now. This guy is not even a Syrian citizen and hasn't lived there for two decades while in the United States. The American people need more information what these people are up to. Even while they were here planning to get rid of Saddam, they were plotting the takeover of Syria too. And their head Quarters is in Turkey. The more information I find out, I'm against it. And if you don't believe it look at the biographies of Sabara and his number two man. This is no difference than Karzai being installed in Afghanistan. There is another thing needs to be said about Turkey's Government. They have the most documented Human Abuses according to Human Rights organization and over 40,000 people have died in their internal conflicts. The prime minister of Turkey has a nerve to criticize another!

this will be interesting.

I'm sure they don't want to risk losing more without US leadership in the matter, or risk action by officers that still resent the Islamists' betrayal of Turkey's secular traditions.

leave us alone.

You might ask the Turks who just got bombed what they think of getting more deeply involved in Syria. I hear they're running around with sticks looking for Syrians to beat up (and I don't mean Assad).

Turkey, as a the main conduit for rebel weapons courtesy of those friends of democracy the Gulf sheiks, has plenty of Syrian blood on its hands. Now, there's some Turkish blood, too.

Syrian forces did that bombing... probably for a multitude of reasons.

That still doesn't mean the US should be involved.

All sides suck.
The Syrian government under Assad with his chemical weapons
The rebels that increasingly include ( our friends ) al Qaeda
And the Turks with their genocidal issues.

Sorry.

And quite frankly the only sane player was ISrael that took out Syria's missile and chemical factories.

I mean, who have the Turks fought in the past 40 years?

And, wow, they overcame the mighty Greeks.

The Turkish War of Independence (Turkish: İstiklâl Harbi, literally meaning "Independence War" or Kurtuluş Savaşı, literally meaning "Liberation War;" May 19, 1919 – July 24, 1923) was a war waged by Turkish nationalists against the Allies, after the country was occupied following the Ottoman Empire's defeat in World War I.[47][48][49]

The Turkish National Movement (Kuva-yi Milliye) in Anatolia culminated in the formation of a new Grand National Assembly (GNA) by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his colleagues. After the end of the Turkish-Armenian, Franco-Turkish, Greco-Turkish wars, the Treaty of Sèvres was abandoned and the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in July 1923. The Allies left Anatolia and Eastern Thrace and the GNAT decided the establishment of a Republic in Turkey which was declared on October 29, 1923.

With the establishment of the Turkish National Movement, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era and the Empire came to an end, and with Atatürk's reforms the Turke created a modern, secular nation-state on the political front.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_War_of_Independence

The Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, known as the Western Front (Turkish: Batı Cephesi) of the Turkish War of Independence in Turkey and the Asia Minor Campaign (Greek: ???????????ή ????????ί? or the Asia Minor Catastrophe (Greek: ???????????ή ?????????ή in Greece, was a series of military events occurring during the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after World War I between May 1919 and October 1922. The war was fought between Greece and the Turkish National Movement who would later establish the Republic of Turkey.

The Greek campaign was launched because the western Allies, particularly British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, had promised Greece territorial gains at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. It ended with Greece giving up all territory gained during the war, returning to its pre-war borders, and engaging in a population exchange with the newly established Turkish Republic under the provisions of the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations signed prior to the Treaty of Lausanne.

The collective failure of the Greek military campaign against the Turkish revolutionaries, coupled with the expulsion of the French military from the region of Cilicia, forced the Allies to abandon the Treaty of Sèvres. Instead, they negotiated a new treaty at Lausanne. This new treaty recognised the independence of the Republic of Turkey and its sovereignty over East Thrace and Anatolia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Turkish_War_%281919%E2%80%931922%29

The Turkish invasion of Cyprus,[15] launched on 20 July 1974, was a Turkish military invasion in response to a Greek military junta backed coup in Cyprus. It is known in Turkey as the "Cyprus Peace Operation" (Turkish: Kıbrıs Barış Harekâtı , "Cyprus Operation" (Kıbrıs Harekâtı or by its Turkish Armed Forces code name Operation Atilla (Atilla Harekâtı .

The coup, ordered by the military Junta in Greece and staged by the Cypriot National Guard[16][17] in conjunction with EOKA-B, deposed the Cypriot president Archbishop Makarios III and installed Nikos Sampson[18] in his place.[19]

More than one quarter of the population of Cyprus was expelled from the occupied northern part of the island where Greek Cypriots constituted 80% of the population. A little over a year later in 1975, there was also a flow of roughly 60,000 Turkish Cypriots from the south to the north after the conflict.[20] The Turkish invasion ended in the partition of Cyprus along the UN-monitored Green Line which still divides Cyprus today. In 1983 the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) declared independence, although Turkey is the only country which recognises it.[21]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_invasion_of_Cyprus

prime ministers' words very carefully. He is trying to lure the U.S. into the conflict. His words was, I support a U.S. no fly zone to support the rebels. If Turkey's military is all that, then why don't Turkey enforce a no fly zone over Syrian Territory?

He has no friends in Tehran or Baghdad. Part of his population is Shia. He was elected with 49 percent of the vote and he has problems with the Kurds in Turkey. So he wants the United States to spend their money and military to take care of Assad. Turkey is not that friendly with Russia either. Turkey is a men ber of NATO. The Russians and Chinese will see right through that. I'd seen the plan from the other side that consider's Turkey as a national security threat for Russia and China. The bottomline, Russia, China and Iran weill never allow it because they are suspicious of Turkey also and their willingness to allow the U.S. carry out military operations from their Territory. The U.S. shares nuclear weapons with Turkey also. Seriously think about the words put out by both sides and their meanings along with their actions.

Russia claims if the U.S. attacks Iran they consider it a threat to their National Security. China likewise. Iran claims an attack on Syria is a threat by Israel and the U.S. and they will act. And if you add in Hezbullah with the most significant military force in Lebanon, they consider it likewise. Iraq will probably go along with Shia Iran. So now suppose all those Dominoes fall into place and then you have North Korea willing to take an opportunity against South Korea, while the U.S. is busy. I've seen a plan like that. U.S. gets in, we are talking about this spreading into a World War III possibly. You are talking about major lost of life, from tensions have been boiling over a period of time. All triggered by regime change. and when you escalates further, who among your Middle East props do you think can be trusted? Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia,Qatar, Egypt, or Libya? The other side is scheming too. The bottomline, he is coming to the U.S. trying to get the U.S. to commit military forces in Syria. Why don't he quit begging and do it himself if Turkey is so tough.