The shells incident happened in southern Turkey at Hatay province on Friday afternoon. Turkey responds to a mortar shell fired from Syria, state-run news reports; Turkish PM Erdogan warns his country is "not far" from war, says those who "test" Turkey are "making a fatal mistake."

Turkey's parliament has voted by 320 to 129 to authorize the deployment of troops in Syria as China, Russia and other countries around the world warned of escalating tension in the region.

Thursday's vote came after the Turkish military fired shells into Syria in response to a Syrian shell that killed five people in the border town of Akcakale on Wednesday.

Turkey should use this pretext to create the buffer zone that it has been demanding for some time. This is the right time to put extra outside pressure on Assad to lead the way for his regime and all its henchmen to wash their hands off the blood of Syrian women and children.

It is fascinating to watch people like Assad to stand in front of his wife and kids and listen how he explains to them why he is killing so many women and children, when he goes to work after his breakfast.
But probably that is what he wants to teach his kids as well, like he was taught from his childhood by his blood thirsty father.

The Assad's seeds of killing everything and everybody that one day might say something against them has been sown, so to bring future peace to Syria you must uproot the Assad dynasty.

Assad has no respect for international borders just as he has no respect for human life. Turkey is well within its right to defend itself through return shelling of Assad's forces.

Turkey is an ally and a member of NATO and by treaty, an attack on Turkey is an attack on all of NATO.

I have no doubt US will be working to minimize the chances of a larger conflict, but if Turkey is forced to take military action to defend itself, we owe it to them to give them our complete support.

Every nation-state is obligated to protect its civilian population from foreign aggressors and engage in defensive "wars of necessity," when necessary to defend them. That right is enshrined in Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, recognizing the right of all U.N. members to "individual, or collective self-defense." Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, combatant states are required to observe the "discrimination principle (discrimination between combatants and non-combatants)," to protect the lives of non-combatants.

The Syrian regime has already killed 32,000 Syrian men, women and children, primarily non-combatants, expendable to preserve the regime. Turkey places a much higher value on the lives of its citizens and acts decisively to protect them.