In a Conflict, what does it mean to Defend on your turn?

Question

According to the rules for Conflicts:

Next, each character takes a turn in order. On their turn, a character can take one of the four actions. Resolve the action to determine the outcome. The conflict is over when only one side has characters still in the fight.

The four actions are Create Advantage, Overcome, Attack, and Defend. To me, this implies that Defend is an action you can take on your turn. However, this doesn't make sense because the resolution rules for Defend assume that there is an opposing action.

What does it mean to Defend on your turn?

Answer 1

It probably means you get a +2 on your Defend rolls.

If you want, you can forgo your action for the exchange to concentrate on defense. You don't get to do anything proactive, but you do get to roll all defend actions for the exchange at a +2 bonus.

-- "Full Defense", from the SRD

Yeah, it's the Fate Core SRD, but Fate Core and Fate Accelerated aren't different games, and Accelerated is kind of notoriously a little too pared down to make a book with a $5 cover price. You can use one to patch the other.

There's just way less of a reason to do this in Accelerated, most of the time. The broader applicability of approaches means you're probably not going to wind up in a conflict you don't have a fighting chance in, where your best option is to turtle up and wait for the other PCs to bail you out. And usually, but not always, Accelerated conflicts aren't set up to be big complicated things, where it makes sense to just hold your ground by the blast door while Twilliam's trying to get it open up in the control room, because the real concerning stuff is on the other side.

But there's nothing exactly stopping them from being set up that way, either. So, if you ever find yourself in an Accelerated conflict where you really do just need to stall for time, might as well borrow Full Defense from Fate Core.