Turkey yesterday moved a step closer to military intervention in northern Iraq when parliament voted by 507 in favour to 19 against to authorise cross-border attacks on guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The government and parliament ignored diplomatic appeals from Washington and Baghdad not to pass the motion, all the while stressing that military action was not necessarily imminent.
Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan may use the authorisation at any time over the coming year.
"We are at the point where patience has run out," Turkey's deputy prime minister Cemil Cicek told parliament before the vote, referring to PKK attacks that have killed 28 Turks in three weeks.
"We are, however, a great nation, and a great state. What suits a great nation is the exercise of patience ..."
Speaking at a White House press conference yesterday, President George Bush warned Turkey against launching a military offensive.
Turkey's concerns, he said, should be addressed through dialogue with Iraqi authorities. "We are making it very clear to Turkey that we don't think it is in their interest to send troops into Iraq."
Ankara says 3,500 PKK guerrillas use the mountains of northern Iraq as a base to strike Turkey. Some 37,000 people have died since the PKK launched its violent campaign against Turkish rule in 1984.
At a time when Turkey is divided over secularism and the right for women to wear the Islamic headscarf, the vote was a dramatic show of national unity.
The 19 deputies who opposed the resolution on the grounds that it would destabilise the region and create hardship for the Kurdish southeast of the country are members of the Democratic Society Party, which some consider the political wing of the PKK.
The real question now is whether and when Mr Erdogan will see fit to send the army, Nato's second largest, into Iraq. Ankara already maintains a base with 150 soldiers near Dohuk, northern Iraq, the legacy of the last incursion in 1997.
It is believed that Turkey has carried out at least 23 cross-border operations in the past, each time declaring it was the last time.
However, this time Turkish intervention risks inflaming the only relatively stable part of Iraq, and confronting the US with the dilemma of a war between its Turkish allies and its Iraqi Kurdish allies.
Oil prices earlier rose to record highs of over $88 per barrel in expectation of the Turkish vote.
Ankara accuses Washington and Baghdad of sitting idly by while the PKK attacks Turkey from northern Iraq. Baghdad yesterday pleaded for more time.
On a visit to Ankara in the failed hope of dissuading Turkey from voting for yesterday's resolution, Tariq al-Hashimi, one of Iraq's vice-presidents, said: "The Iraqi government should be given a chance to prevent cross-border terror activities."
Mr Bush yesterday also condemned a resolution being considered by Congress that would describe as genocide the killing during the first World War of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. Turkish anger at the resolution is thought to have been a factor in the decision to go ahead with yesterday's vote authorising military intervention in Iraq.
Mr Bush said: "One thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire. The resolution on the mass killings of Armenians beginning in 1915 is counterproductive.
"Both Republicans and Democrats, including every living former secretary of state, have spoken out against this resolution."
Support for the resolution appeared to be melting yesterday as congressmen from both parties citing the administration's argument that antagonising Turkey could interfere with the US military campaign in Iraq.