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).
