#1 The Turks have a reputation for being staunch fighters. Put them up in a defensive position and they will defend it to the last man, as they proved at Gallipoli and during their engagements with Chinese troops during the Korean War. The problem is that they have had serious difficulties with domestic Kurdish guerrillas who number in the thousands. How would they deal with Syrian guerrillas in the tens or hundreds of thousands? The prospects of Turkish body bags numbering in the thousands per year is why the Turks haven't intervened in Syria. Not to mention the prospect of Arab ingratitude after the expenditure of tens of thousands of dead Turks and the destruction of billions of dollars of Turkish military equipment at the hands of Syrian troops and guerrillas.
In addition, millions of Turkish Alawites are irate at Turkish government proclamations of solidarity with Syrian Sunni Arabs. They see the Sunni Arab rebellion in Syria as the beginning of a program of physical annihilation against Alawites. If Erdogan invades Syria, he might have to add an Alawite insurgency in Turkey to the Kurdish insurgency that currently kills hundreds of Turkish soldiers a year. That, on top of the fact that secular elements of the Turkish military might take the opportunity to stage a coup and defenestrate him, should give Erdogan pause about any Turkish intervention. |