"We do not see Syria as a foreign problem; Syria is our domestic problem because we have an 850-kilometer border with this country, we have historical and cultural ties, we have kinship," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in August 2011, days before his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, paid his last visit to the Syrian capital to meet [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad. Upon Davutoglu’s return, Erdogan decided there was no chance left to work for a solution with Assad, and announced that toppling the Syrian regime had become state policy.
The Erdogan government today, however, claims that the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is playing a dirty game and exploiting the Syrian crisis domestically by pushing a sectarian-oriented policy in Turkey. Erdogan even went so far as to accuse CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu of being responsible for the May 11 terrorist attack that left 52 dead in Reyhanli, a town on the Syrian border. For his part, Kilicdaroglu also holds Erdogan responsible for the deaths in Reyhanli. There is, however, a significant difference between these two accusations, although both are equally distasteful.