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Davutoglu's Syria defense

Turkey’s foreign minister refrains from bringing up Syria at the NATO summit.
(L-R) Estonia's Foreign Minister Urmas Paet greets Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu next to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen during a NATO foreign ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels April 1, 2014. NATO will decide new steps on Tuesday to reinforce eastern European countries worried by Russia's annexation of Crimea, and on how to bolster Ukraine's armed forces.    REUTERS/Francois Lenoir (BELGIUM  - Tags: POLITICS MILITARY) - RTR3JGMR

Retired Brig. Gen. Haldun Solmazturk, who spent many years serving with NATO, tells Al-Monitor, “If there was really a threat to Turkey from Syria, and if there was really concrete intelligence about it, it would go without saying that Turkey would propose putting this on the agenda for the [NATO] foreign ministers meeting.” Yet, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says that Turkey did not put any potential threat to Turkey from Syria on the official agenda when NATO foreign ministers held their regularly scheduled meeting in Brussels on April 1-2. 

Turkish officials, including Davutoglu, have been arguing for more than a month that they had received a credible threat to the Tomb of Suleiman Shah, 35 kilometers (24 miles) from the Turkish border inside Syria and the only Turkish territory outside Turkey proper. A recent controversial audio leak of top officials' conversations, however, revealed a different story about Turkish intentions. While Turkey blocked access to YouTube just hours after this leak occurred on March 25, and decreed that even discussing the leaked contents would be treason, there is an ongoing legal debate whether the Turkish government is really acting within the legal boundaries.

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