Reuters Just over a year ago, Turkey's prime minister addressed Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus as “my brother”. Today, illusions of kinship are long gone and the region's rising power finds itself marshalling efforts to press him from power, but increasingly wary of being pitched into military action. The falling out between Al-Assad and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan grew personal as well as diplomatic as Syria's president ignored Turkish calls for restraint and pressed his attacks on protesters. Erdogan drew a comparison with Nazi Germany in some of the strongest words of any major leader on Syria. In one email, intercepted and published in Britain's Guardian newspaper, Al-Assad's wife Asma is asked if she would pass her email address to Erdogan's wife. “I use this account only for family and friends,” she replies. “It would be difficult for me at this stage to consider her in either category after the insults they have directed towards the president.” The Syrian insurrection has tested the limits of Turkish regional diplomatic power that has grown markedly under Erdogan's stewardship. For years Ankara invested heavily in relations with Syria and Al-Assad, calculating closer ties could foster both trade and reforms in its southern neighbor, as well as weaken its reliance on Iran, for centuries Turkey's main regional rival. “They thought that because of the personal relationship that had developed between Erdogan and Bashar, the Syrians would be a pushover,” said Philip Robins of Oxford University. “There was a complete misunderstanding based on an assumption that they had maneuvred the other side so that they would do their bidding, and that absolutely was not the case.” Syrian protests escalated from March last year. Assad failed to heed ever more insistent telephone calls from Erdogan and visits from Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu appealing for reform. By August, Ankara had had enough. Having seen the rapid revolution in Egypt and with the overthrow of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi seemingly imminent, Turkey sharply turned against its erstwhile ally in Damascus. “They wanted to position themselves on the right side of history, expecting the Syrian regime to fall in weeks as in Tunisia and Egypt,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. Turkey now hosts Syria's main opposition groups and shelters the rebel Free Syria Army on its side of the common frontier. On April 1, it will be the venue of a meeting of Western and Middle Eastern officials and groups involved with Syria. Assad has shown himself to be impervious to verbal assault and resilient to increasingly violent protests and guerrilla attacks. He is also for now at least largely insulated from strong United Nations-backed action due to the vetoes of China and his backer Russia on the Security Council. “Right now there is a disappointing situation for Ankara,” said Salem. “What they banked on didn't happen. Their bluff and bluster was met by bluff and bluster from the Syrian side and now we are certainly in a bit of a stalemate.” Without backing from the UN, or at least the Arab League and NATO, Turkey is unwilling to go it alone in Syria. But with a 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria, more than 16,000 Syrian refugees on its soil and hundreds more arriving each day, it is not a problem from which Ankara can simply walk away. Turkey has signalled a huge flood of refugees or massacres on its door-step would be red lines that would force it to act, but short of military intervention, there are few effective options available, analysts said. __
