Turkey, which has the unique distinction of being Syria’s neighbor and a NATO member, is escalating its call for international involvement in the Syrian crisis. Though it had previously been involved in training and arming the rebels (who use their territory as a base), it today reiterated its call for international intervention inside Syrian borders:

Turkey urged the United Nations on Wednesday to protect displaced Syrians inside their country but President Bashar al-Assad, battling rebels determined to overthrow him, dismissed talk of a buffer zone on Syrian territory.

Ankara fears a mass influx such as the flight of half a million Iraqi Kurds into Turkey after the 1991 Gulf War, and has floated the idea of a “safe zone” under foreign protection within Syria for civilians fleeing intensifying violence.

“We expect the United Nations to engage on the topic of protecting refugees inside Syria and if possible sheltering them in camps there,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

France has supported Turkey’s call for a safe zone in Syria, and pressure for action increased after the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday Syria’s refugee exodus was accelerating. Up to 200,000 people could settle in Turkey alone if the conflict worsens, the UNHCR said.

While Turkey frames the issue as refugee protection, it’s very clear this would be a significant military operation — the notion of “safe zones” inside Syrian territory have been the key policy advocated by supporters of intervention against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey’s principal concern is most likely limiting refugee flows into its own territory, which have escalated significantly in recent months as the conflict has:

The waves of refugees fleeing Dara’a, the Damascus suburbs, Aleppo and the Idlib region near Turkey in recent days have provided a barometer of the escalating violence in the 18-month-old conflict, in which neither the government of President Bashar al-Assad nor the opposition seems capable of striking a decisive blow.

[A U.N. spokesperson] said the number of refugees escaping to Turkey had multiplied to 5,000 a day from 400 or 500 daily several weeks ago. In the past 24 hours, she said, 3,000 people had entered Turkey, with 10,000 more waiting.

In Turkey, which had said it would not accept more than 100,000 refugees, officials said they had revised the number to 120,000, and were preparing contingency plans for more.

Speaking about the conflict, Assad told his state run TV station today that “[the army] definitely needs time to bring it to a decisive end. But I can sum it up in one sentence: we’re heading forward.” Meanwhile, his air force has stepped up strikes against rebel forces without much regard for civilian casualties.

Today on CBS’s morning show, former Bush administration Secretary of State and top Mitt Romney surrogate Condoleezza Rice could not offer any specific foreign policy failures made by President Obama. Romney’s allies, led by Rice and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), are expected to attack Obama on national security grounds tonight in at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

But when asked to offer specifics this morning on CBS, all Rice could come up with was some vague attack on Obama’s Syria policy, which, host Norah O’Donnell noted, the president himself might agree with:

O’DONNELL: Can you be specific about somewhere where you think President Obama has failed on foreign policy.

RICE: What we should do tonight, is talk about what a President Romney would mean for America. It’s not a time to look back, it’s a time to look forward. We have real challenges out there, in the Middle East, in Asia, in Europe, with our allies.

O’DONNELL: But if President Obama isn’t doing anything wrong, then why change things?

RICE: It’s a question of what a President Romney would do and there is no doubt that the United States’ voice has been muted and when the United States’ voice is muted the world is a more dangerous place.

O’DONNELL: How is the United States’ voice muted?

RICE: Just look at the situation in Syria for instance. We have a circumstance in which Assad is butchering his people. The Iranians are helping him to do so. The United States seems to be mired in the Security Council. The Russians and the Chinese say no, no, no and we don’t have an answer. When that is the case, it’s a dangerous place. …

O’DONNELL: But I think the president agrees with that as well. Having covered the White House, the question is whether … a President Romney would be willing to advocate and commit American troops, American lives, in a place like Syria right now.

Watch the clip:

So despite the fact that the GOP plans to attack Obama’s foreign policy, Rice has no interest in “looking back.” Instead, she said, she wants to “look forward,” yet she doesn’t have any idea what Romney’s international agenda is either. And on Syria, it turns out that the policy Romney has articulated thus far isn’t much different from the Obama administration’s.

But as far as attacking Obama on foreign policy grounds goes, the Republicans are going to have a tough time. Poll after poll shows that Americans favor Obama over Romney in handling international issues. And the Wall Street Journal noted today that their recent poll “found 54% of voters approve of Mr. Obama’s handling of foreign policy, his highest score in more than a year and far better than what either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton fetched as they sought re-election.”