By Daily Star Editorial 

Syria today stands at a crossroads, facing the momentous question of which direction the country is headed.
President Bashar Assad told the visiting Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, Tuesday that his government would not waver in fighting what he called terrorist groups.

In turn, Davutoglu said that the next few days would be crucial for monitoring developments on the ground in Syria, while Ankara would continue its contacts with all elements of Syrian society in a bid to find a way out of the crisis. The minister also emphatically said he was delivering a “Turkish message,” i.e. a stance that was not authored in Washington, but one that rather represented genuine Turkish concerns about instability in its southern neighbor.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s foreign minister, Mohammad Kamel Amr, has said Syria is heading for the point of no return, and called for an immediate end to the violence. He added that any reforms undertaken under the current circumstances would be soaked in the blood of martyrs, which would lead nowhere, unlike the process of dialogue, which he said should include all segments of Syrian society.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, weighed in by telling his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moallem, that Moscow wants to see an end to bloodshed, and the beginning of meaningful dialogue, while Iraq’s speaker of Parliament, Osama al-Nujaifi, condemned the crackdown in his country’s eastern neighbor.

Finally, a group of Syria’s ostensible allies on the U.N. Security Council – India, Brazil and South Africa was scheduled to send envoys to Damascus on the heels of Davutoglu’s visit, to try and communicate the message that the authorities need to re-think their position.

Perhaps the Syrian leadership believes that the matter at hand is the Middle East peace process, and that a string of foreign diplomatic visitors to the Presidential Palace is something to brag about.

These diplomatic warnings and high-level visits were unfolding amid the news that at least 25 people were killed Tuesday in villages and towns in Syria. Significantly, a military action was launched against people in the north, trying to flee to Turkey. Meanwhile the state media continued to dissect the process of political reform and change in Syria, while it wasn’t claiming that all of the unrest was the work of “armed gangs.” The most difficult part involves trying to figure out which country this media is talking about when it launches into long-winded, detailed descriptions of the required reform process.

The Syrian authorities have made no alteration to their policy of using brutal force against civilian protestors, no matter what the costs. Such an approach might “succeed” over the short term, but will only make the path to a political solution for Syria’s future much more difficult. The policy that that is currently being followed in Damascus is nothing short of self-destructive.