“We are not interested in war, but we're not far from it either," Erdoğan said in a speech in Istanbul on Friday.

According to Turkish reports, the country is attempting to establish a buffer zone around the border, calling on the Syrian military to stay 10 kilometers away from the Turkish side.

While there have a been a number of cross-border incursions since the civil war in Syria broke out, the two countries appear the closest yet to a full confrontation. Syria’s conflict has perhaps weighed the heaviest on Turkey, which has taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees and is dealing with an increasingly vocal — and violent — Kurdish independence movement along its borders.

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