The Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton-instigated war on Syria leaned way over the precipice toward World War III earlier this week when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan let slip the real reason behind the NATO assault on Syria is the removal of Bashar Assad.
Erdogan said, “We entered [Syria] to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror. [We didn’t enter] for any other reason.”
Of course, removing Assad to be replaced by an American puppet regime that would allow a natural gas pipeline across Syria into Turkey was the goal of the Obama/Clinton operation from the beginning. It was the exercise of “soft power” (Clinton’s terminology) as we saw in Libya.
Obama has tried to walk a fine line on Syria ever since the American people rose up and pressured Congress to deny Obama’s request for a military strike on Syria in August of 2013. Obama tried to use the false flag chemical attack on the so-called moderate opposition forces – blamed on Assad but carried out by another group of so-called “moderate” rebels – to pressure Congress to grant him military attack authority. That chemical attack crossed the “red line” Obama had set as a precursor to direct U.S. intervention (as opposed to the then-secret CIA intervention that was ongoing and now continues openly).
Erdogan’s slip of the tongue – if that’s what it was – has been largely ignored by the American media. But it brought a swift response from the Kremlin – Assad’s biggest partner.
RT reported that Erdogan’s statement “caused consternation in the Kremlin.” From RT:

“The statement was indeed news, this is a very serious statement. [It] is in discord with the previous [statements] in general and with our understanding of the situation,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
“We hope that in the near future there will be explanations on this from our Turkish partners,” he said, adding that Russia is the only country whose armed forces are in Syria on a legitimate basis – at the direct request of the Syrian authorities.
Answering a question as to whether Erdogan’s comments would affect the relations between Moscow and Ankara, Peskov stressed that Turkey is Moscow’s partner and therefore will have to explain its stance before the Russian authorities make any judgments.
“Before making any judgments, we expect that this position will be clarified,” Peskov said.
President Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, discussed the situation in Syria in a telephone call on Wednesday, the Kremlin’s press service reported.

Erdogan backtracked Thursday. Or in the words of Al Masdar News, he “retracted his statement” after the conversation with Putin.

“The aim of the Euphrates Shield Operation is not against any country or person but only terror organizations. No one should doubt this issue that we have uttered over and over, and no one should comment on it in another fashion or try to derail it,” Erdogan said at his 30th gathering with village chiefs at the Presidential Palace in Ankara.

Middle Eastern governments friendly to the U.S. – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Turkey, etc. – financed the operation to overthrow Assad with U.S. assistance. This led to the creation of ISIS, which continues to be funded by those governments with an assist from Israel.
Erdogan’s “slip” may or may not have been intentional. There is evidence that the coup to take him out was a CIA operation to topple him for cozying up to Putin. Both the Turkish lira and the Turkish stock market are tanking. So Erdogan may have been playing games in order to show  his allegiance to Washington and/or create a sense of nationalism in order to reverse those negative trends. That’s a ploy that has been used by governments many times.
But with Turkey (NATO member) at the point of the spear in Syria and Erdogan prodding the Russian bear, a Russian response to Turkey’s saber rattling would put the U.S. directly at odds with Russia and bound (by NATO treaty) to assist if Turkey is attacked.
The neocon war machine seems bound and determined to provoke Russia into war. Obama’s neocon-backed and ham-handed Middle East meddling needs to end sooner rather later, lest we fall over the precipice and into full-scale war.
Let’s hope Erdogan can keep his mouth shut until we get some sanity in U.S. foreign policy and the neocon war hawks removed from places of influence.