Turkey is ‘Playing a Dangerous Game’ — and What Comes Next Could Make It Worse

Last week, Turkey went from being effectively neutral in the conflict brewing on its southern border to opening a war on two fronts against ISIS in northern Syria and the Kurdish PKK in northern Iraq.

And what happens next will determine just how messy Ankara’s Syria policy has become.

The dramatic reversal came after an ISIS-affiliated suicide bomber killed 32 activists in the southeastern town of Suruc, just across the border from the embattled city of Kobani, Syria.

The Turkish side of the border had remained relatively peaceful up until then, despite the vast number of foreign fighters coming and going from Turkey and Syria.

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That status quo was likely the result of high-level communication between Turkish officials of the ruling AKP party and ranking ISIS members, Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider.

“The border has been exceptionally quiet, which is a major indicator, for me, that the AKP had intelligence ties to ISIS,” Schanzer said, noting how kind Turkey’s border policies have been to the jihadis.

“Given the overall posture of [ISIS], why else would it refrain from attacking a pro-Western NATO member?” Schanzer added.

“It’s a dangerous game they’ve always been playing,” Schanzer told BI.

“The AKP needed the Kurdish angle to sell the war to ultra-nationalists inside Turkey,” whose main priority is to curb Kurdish territorial gains along its southern border, Schanzer explained.

“It looks to me like a lot of the progress [Turkey made with the Kurds] is going to be unraveled,” Schanzer said.

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