This article analyzes Turkey’s Syria policy with particular reference to a nascent international legal and political norm, responsibility to protect (R2) by reliance on a detailed review of the discourse and statements of the Turkish political elites. To this end, the author argues that Turkey relied on this norm to justify its policy by which it asked the Assad regime to take proper measures to protect the people, and later stage, to step down because the regime was viewed as source of failure to protect the Syrian people. The article further discusses why this policy failed.