Over the past few months these are the images that millions of Turks have been absorbing nightly on national television as the government keeps up the momentum of its drive to destroy armed Islamic factions.
On Friday he sanctioned air strikes against Isis fighters that destroyed arms and equipment.
The three Ulster Unionist members had resigned their posts last week in a staged protest over I.R.A. intransigence on destroying arms.
But backers saw the tough talk as evidence that the I.R.A. was preparing the republican faithful for decisions to start destroying arms.
Putting arms beyond use could be a method of destroying arms or sealing off arms caches that would allow the I.R.A. to disarm in a way that did not constitute surrender in its eyes.
Following the initial skirmish at Lexington, British soldiers entered Concord on April 19 , 1775 for the purpose of destroying arms and ammunition collected by the Americans, but, forewarned by Paul Revere, the residents had already removed most of the supplies.
The British commander, Lord Kitchener, devised a scorched-earth policy against the commandos and the rural population supporting them, in which he destroyed arms, blockaded the countryside, and placed the civilian population in concentration camps.
President Barack Obama said yesterday that the air strikes had destroyed arms and equipment that Isis could have used to attack Erbil, the Kurdish capital, but he warned that the current operation in Iraq could take some time.
None of the explosives were destroyed, arms experts familiar with the decision recalled, because Iraq argued that it should be allowed to keep them for eventual use in mining and civilian construction.
