As Turkey was shuddering from scandals involving corruption, wiretaps and the closing down of Twitter as it neared the March 30 local elections, the Syria crisis came as a lifesaver to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As the threat that al-Qaeda was going to attack the sovereign Turkish enclave of the Tomb of Suleiman Shah inside Syria turned out to be a non-event albeit one that kept Turkey’s agenda busy for a few days, the real bomb came with the shooting down of a Syrian warplane that was attacking opposition fighters trying to capture the Syrian town of Kassab on the Turkish border. With the shooting down of the plane, the election rallies of the governing party immediately assumed the atmosphere of “our victorious prime minister.”
Lübnan Marunîleri / Yasin Atlıoğlu
