Syria escalated tensions with Turkey on Monday, October 8, accusing its neighbor and former friend of imperialist delusions reminiscent of Ottoman dynastic rule, as Syrian Army gunners exchanged artillery blasts with their Turkish counterparts across the border for the sixth consecutive day, The New York Times reported. “Turkey isn’t the Ottoman Sultanate,” Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, said in reaction to Turkish government suggestions that Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa could serve as an interim president. Meanwhile, insurgent sympathizers and the Syrian government described an extremely violent day in the nearly 19-month-old uprising in Syria. Killings and destruction were reported in the cities of Aleppo, Homs and Dara’a and in northern Idlib Province, where rebels claimed to have discovered a massacre committed by security forces. In Damascus, there were reports that a suicide attacker had detonated a bomb near a government intelligence compound.