"We will defend Aleppo: all of Turkey stands behind its defenders,'' says Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on February 10.
"Turkey and Saudi Arabia may launch an operation [into Syria] by land,'' says Turkish Foreign Minister Mehmed Cavusoglu on February 13.
"There is no thought of Turkish soldiers entering Syria,'' says Turkish Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz on February 14.
Between Wednesday of last week and Sunday night, the Turkish Government, in league with Saudi Arabia, made a tentative decision to enter the war on the ground in Syria, and then got cold feet.
Or more likely, the Turkish army simply told the Government it would not invade Syria and risk the possibility of a shooting war with the Russians.
The Turkish Government bears a large share of the responsibility for the devastating Syrian civil war.
From the start, Turkey's leader, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, was publicly committed to overthrowing the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
For five years, he kept Turkey's border with Syria open so that arms, money and volunteers could flow across to feed the rebellion.
Mr Erdogan's hatred of Mr Assad is rooted in the fact that he is a militant Sunni Muslim while Mr Assad leads a regime dominated by Shia Muslims.
Both men rule countries that are officially secular, but Mr Erdogan's long-term goal is to impose Islamic religious rule on Turkey.
Mr Assad is defending the multiethnic, multifaith traditional Syrian society while running a brutally repressive regime.
Neither man gives a fig for democracy.
Saudi Arabia has been Mr Erdogan's main ally in the task of turning Syria into a Sunni-ruled IS (although 30% of Syrians are not Sunni Muslims).
Together, these countries and some Gulf states subverted the original non-violent movement in Syria that was demanding a secular democracy, and then armed and supplied the Sunni-dominated armed rebellion that replaced it.
The US Government also wanted to see Mr Assad's regime destroyed (for strategic reasons, not religious ones).
So, for years, Washington turned a blind eye to the fact that its allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, were actually supporting the extremists of Islamic State (IS) and the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's franchise in Syria.
Largely as a result of that support, these two extremist organisations now completely dominate the Syrian revolt against Mr Assad's rule, accounting for 80% to 90% of the active fighters.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia finally broke their ties with IS last year, but they still back the Nusra Front, which has camouflaged itself behind an array of minor "moderate'' groups in the so-called "Army of Islam''.
When the Nusra Front, with strong Turkish support, overran much of northwestern Syria last spring, Russia finally went to the aid of its longstanding ally, the Syrian Government.
Russian air power helped the Syrian army push back the troops of both the Nusra Front and IS.
Mr Erdogan pushed back, ordering Turkish fighters to shoot down a Russian bomber last November.
Even at the time, however, it was clear that the Turkish army was unhappy about the prospect of a military clash with Russia.
It doesn't share Mr Erdogan's dream of an Islamist-ruled Syria either.
Meanwhile, the Russian bombs kept falling, the Syrian army went on advancing, and now it has cut the main supply line from Turkey to the rebels in and around Aleppo.
Mr Erdogan is frustrated and angry, and he now has an equally reckless ally in Prince Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi deputy Crown Prince and defence minister.
Over the past week, these two men appear to have talked themselves into a limited military incursion into Syria to push the regime's troops back and reopen the supply lines to the rebels.
This would also have allowed the Turkish army to whack the Syrian Kurds, who are building a de facto independent state in the Kurdish-majority territory along Turkey's southern border.
(Mr Erdogan is already at war with Turkey's own Kurdish nationalists, having broken a four-year truce with them last summer.)
On Saturday, the Turkish army began shelling Syrian Kurdish forces. On Sunday, Mr Assad's government complained to the UN that about 100 "Turkish soldiers or mercenaries'' had crossed the border into Syria.
But at that point the grown-ups took over, and the Turkish defence minister denied there was any intention to invade Syria.
France publicly warned Turkey to end its attacks on Saturday, and there were doubtless frantic warnings to the same effect from Turkey's other Nato allies.
Turkey (and Saudi Arabia) have almost certainly been put on notice that if they choose to start a local war with Russian forces in Syria, they will have to fight it alone.
● Gwynne Dyer is an independent London journalist.
