No need to start banging the war drums

President Abdullah Gül said his government was still investigating what had happened, but "no one should have any doubt that whatever [action] is necessary will be taken." Almost all columnists agree that despite the shock of the attack and prior news reports signaling possible war, Turkey should not overreact. Instead, it should respond with diplomatic methods, including further sanctions against the country.

Bugün's Erhan Başyurt shares his observation that after Syria shot down the warplane, a reality has come to the surface that there are some people or countries that desperately want to see Turkey at war. After the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara flotilla in 2010 and the government's excessive reaction to it, the public started to expect an overreaction to such attacks, but the Mavi Marmara incident had extensive diplomatic repercussions. However, the recent Syrian attack is not a similar situation.

It might have indeed been an accident, or our warplane might have been flying low. And currently a war is what would make Turkey take many steps backwards in its recent democratic and demilitarizing progress. In this sense, Turkey's first official statement was right, for it had a calm, moderate but determined tone. What is of utmost significance right now is to wait until all the details are unveiled and then prepare a diplomatic response, the Bugün columnist says.

“Remember when US warplanes attacked the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade ‘by mistake' during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999? China, which was on its way to becoming a superpower, chose not to increase tensions further and gave no equal response to the attack, although the Chinese government repeatedly stated that it believes the attack was deliberate.” Başyurt says Turkey needs to learn a lesson from China's strategy.

Taraf's Ahmet Altan says in his article: “How many people have we lost recently in the Mediterranean Sea? Nine were killed during the Mavi Marmara raid and two were recently shot by the Syrians. As far as I know, we have not lost that many people in such a short period in the entire republican era. Why did these deaths start to occur at a time when we claim to be the most powerful state that we have ever been? I believe there is a strong correlation between the belief that we are at our most powerful and the number of people killed. I believe these losses of life are the results of the government's obsession with exaggerating its power. We go and claim that no one can touch us, and when some country ‘touches' us, we tend to react excessively.”