With a show of force that threatens to embroil the Middle East in new conflict, Turkey has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers along its border with Syria, and is threatening to send them across, to try to destroy Kurdish rebel bases there.
Turkey sent an estimated 10,000 troops into Iraq late last week on a similar mission, and reports said that 15 Kurdish rebels and one Turkish soldier had been killed in clashes there.
In what has hitherto been largely a rhetorical battle between Ankara and Damascus, Turkish leaders have long accused Syria of aiding the rebels, who have been fighting since the mid-1980s for greater autonomy for the Kurds of south-east Turkey.
Syria's response has been to plead its innocence, to accuse Turkey of building dams on the Euphrates that threaten its water supply, and to suggest that Turkey, which has been forging everdeeper military ties with Israel in the past few years, is being pressed into a more aggressive stance by the Israelis.
Now signs are growing that the rhetoric may be replaced by action. On Friday last, in an unmistakable warning, Turkish fighters overflew the Syrian border. On Saturday Turkey's Prime Minister, Mr Mesut Yilmaz, was quoted as saying that his soldiers on the frontier were now awaiting an order to strike.
Syria, on the defensive, issued a statement offering to resolve the dispute "by diplomatic means and in an atmosphere of mutual confidence".
Yesterday, in an attempt to broker a diplomatic solution, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, one of few leaders in the region having warm relations with both countries, held talks in Damascus with President Hafez alAssad. Mr Mubarak is expected to fly on to Ankara, possibly today.
As the crisis has deepened, Israel has been making ever more strenuous efforts to distance itself from it. Defence Ministry officials, the Defence Minister and yesterday the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, have issued statements insisting that Israel wants no part in the confrontation.
Mr Netanyahu said he hoped the dispute would be resolved through peaceful means, and that he had taken steps to reassure Syria, including cancelling various military activities on the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria 31 years ago. Mr Netanyahu's spokesman, Mr David Bar-Illan, yesterday emphatically denied a remark attributed to him in a Turkish newspaper at the weekend, to the effect that Israel was ready to help the Turks in any conflict.
But Syria clearly believes Israel has played a part in the escalation. Al-Ba'ath, the Syrian state-controlled daily, claimed at the weekend that "Israel is behind the threats being issued against Syria by Turkish leaders". And the Syrian Foreign Minister, Mr Farouq a-Sharaa, is said to have told the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, recently that "Israel is egging on the Turks, trying to harm internal Syrian security".
Several times between 1992 and 1995, Israel and Syria appeared to be close to a peace treaty, under which Israel would have relinquished the Golan Heights in exchange for normalised relations with Syria. But those talks collapsed in 1996.
Michael Jansen adds: Turkey has a standing army of 639,000, reserves of 378,700 and NATO-supplied airpower and armour. The deployment of troops to Iraq and the Syrian frontier and of an expeditionary force to Cyprus does not tax the million-strong Turkish armed forces. Not even Iran, with half a million men under arms (230,000 of them now on the Afghan frontier), can match Turkey.