Shots rang out and two muscular, ambitious powers seemed to bump against each other — but, no, it wasn’t a Franz Ferdinand moment. Rather, the assassination in Turkey of the Russian ambassador this week was probably a botched attempt to sabotage the formation of a game-changing alliance between Moscow and Ankara.
Comparisons with 1914 and the crazy slalom into war were more appropriate a year ago, after Turkey shot up a Russian fighter jet that had nudged into its airspace. Now Turkey, Russia and Iran are, if not exactly the best of friends, positioning themselves as the future partitioning powers of Syria. Their foreign and defence ministers met in Moscow yesterday, sombre because of the gunning down of ambassador Andrei Karlov, but quite electric too;