President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to learn the hard way that the international arena is not a place that will serve his political desires and ambitions. Yet he continues to come out with ill-considered outbursts that pose difficulties for Ankara at a time when it needs international support to overcome the difficulties it increasingly faces at home and abroad.

This was brought home again when he claimed recently that the Turkish military was in Syria to put an end to Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Addressing the Istanbul meeting of the Association of Parliamentarians for Al-Quds (Jerusalem) on Nov. 29, Erdogan said the United Nations had done nothing while a million people were killed in Syria.

“We preached patience but could not endure in the end and had to enter Syria together with the Free Syrian Army,” he said, adding that they did this “to restore justice” to Syria, "not because they coveted Syrian territory."

“We entered there to end the rule of the tyrant Assad, who terrorizes with state terror,” Erdogan said. Yet he disavowed his words only two days later.