Turkey making itself at home in Syria
Turkey is looking less like a visitor in northern Syria as it sets up more permanent facilities and resettles Turkmens in certain areas.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s favorite slogan when defending Operation Euphrates Shield and other cross-border actions in Syria is, “If you are not in the field, then you will be on the menu.”
To be in the field, to get a place at the table, is his way of summarizing Turkey’s interventionist foreign policy that relies on hard power. Nowadays, Turkey’s activities in the Syrian turf it controls between Jarablus-Azaz and al-Bab signals it has more on its mind than combating the Islamic State (IS).
