Friends, Neighbours Lend Me Your Arms

Turkey has dropped Syria from its list of favoured countries. Iran is still up there, however, and perhaps Hezbollah and Hamas remain non-state favourites. But Syria, no. For one thing, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan is one of those statesmen who insists on being recognized as a statesman. If he goes out of his way to visit and to remonstrate and to caution and to advise and his words of cautionary wisdom are ignored, he becomes rather annoyed.

Irascible might describe his frame of mind, and his is a mind that is in lock-step with his vision of Islam and justice. The ideology that is also representative of Islam might colour his perceptions to a good degree but he seems capable of seeing beyond the Muslim to the inner man on occasion. And Bashar al-Assad isn't exactly screening his inner man. It's visible in the ordered assaults of his military against peaceful protests.

The Arab League may have decided to come calling, but Damascus doesn't appear willing to listen to them, either. And let's face it, the Sunni-Shia divide is the size of the Grand Canyon. And Arab countries in the Middle East will not have forgotten too readily, Syria's decision to side with Iran. Syria's Sunni majority is reflected in the greater Sunni majority in most Arab countries.

Turkey is preparing to impose sanctions on President al-Assad's regime, a Shiite, Alawite offshoot. And Turkey is also hosting an armed opposition group, even to permitting them to launch cross-border attacks. The Syrian National Council, the new opposition group is a welcome guest in Turkey, and the Free Syrian Army, comprised of Sunni military defectors mounting their opposition to the regime is guarded by Turkish troops.

Of course, Turkey's decision via Prime Minister Erdogan, to dispose of its formerly warm relations with Syria might seem somewhat awkward, given Turkey's still-warm relations with Iran, Syria's mentor-state. But that relationship appears to remain intact, with Turkey and Iran working in tandem to destroy the notoriously audacious and bothersome PKK, if they can.

Turkey's relations with Middle East countries has undergone quite a turn-about under Prime Minister Erdogan. And the prime minister has much on his plate; sending troops into Iraq after the Kurdish rebels, attempting to stem the humanitarian disaster of Turkish Kurds in the aftermath of the earthquake, accepting international assistance, even of Israel, though denying that strained relations will be eased, and cutting Syria loose of friendship.

The Free Syrian Army's Colonel Riad al-As'aad is grateful to Turkey: "I knew there was greater potential to lead operations in a place in which I was free". And Col. As'aad asks of the international community its assistance as well. "We ask the international community to provide us with weapons so that we, as an army, the Free Syrian Army, can protect the people of Syria."

This oblique request for NATO involvement, a la Libya is not likely to result in a similar response by the West. But Turkey, as a NATO member with one of the largest standing armies, and with its own huge arsenal of weapons could surely spare some shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles and other weapons, and allow its military to support the rebels?