Since the terrorist attacks in Reyhanli on May 11 that left 50 dead, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been on the defensive. “These events have no near or far relation with the opposition forces,” he said Monday [May 13]. “[T]here are efforts here to cast suspicion on the opposition forces and launching operational actions against our refugee brothers in Turkey.”

While the Erdogan government tries to portray the people on the border region with Syria as being provoked against the government and express support for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, the social media knows no limits. “The people here are convinced that it’s not the Syrian regime, but the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to be behind these attacks, and they believe that the refugees were warned in advance of these blasts,” tweeted Ertugrul Kurkcu, pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party deputy, on Monday, as he paid a visit to offer his condolences to the mourning city of Reyhanli. “The ones who blame the FSA are not the Alevis, but people in Reyhanli who are majority Sunnis. They were expecting an attack to happen at any time.” Kurkcu moved on to tweet: “People are concerned that this sabotage and these attacks could be carried to Antakya in a way to create a clash between Alevis and Sunnis.” 

Kurkcu’s tweets are all very telling about the risks of an escalating situation at the Turkey-Syria border. The obvious reason is that Turks are divided like never before. It is only natural in a democracy that a part of society remains cautious to the proposed changes, but the Erdogan government has polarized people in such a way that unity and consensus building is no more a part of the political and societal culture here. People almost do not seem to share the same vision for the future. This is to say if the Turkish government decides to take military action against Syria in response to terrorist attacks at Reyhanli, Erdogan will not find the nation uniting behind his decision 100% — not that he is going to take such an unilateral action, though. But he also lacks the nation's support to encourage the United States into such an action.

When Turkey's parliament rejected the US request in March 2003 to invade Iraq through Turkish territory, they reasoned that there was no direct attack on Turkey and therefore the constitution bans them from waging war against their neighbor. Since then, much has changed. The Erdogan government declared regime change in Syria as a policy in August 2011, the first time Turkey intervened in any sovereign country’s domestic affairs in such magnitude — and Turkey has been in sort of a cold war with its neighbor since then. But, now, Erdogan still can’t unite his people despite such a tragedy — due to his own making. It really does not matter how the Erdogan government likes to silence the different points of views about its Syria policy, but the Turks in the border region have been warning about this tragedy in the making for a long time.