In the endless game of chess among the most unlikely "coalition of willings" and the self-styled Islamic state, the Erdogan government has decided to open explicitly and formally to an attack against Daesh. The news was greeted with jubilation by the press agencies of half the world, however it can only leave perplexity for times and ways of implementation.
Turkey's behavior towards ISIS has fluctuated between the ambiguous and the collaborative for about three years, raising not a few doubts about the loyalty of this ally of the West.
There is no doubt the flow of financial income linked to the black oil market, through the Turkish banks, to the caliph, as well as the partnership of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar in supporting the Syrian rebels first and IS afterwards, all in the anti-Persian function, moreover a few hours before the Turkish air strikes on Syrian territory, the granting of the Incirlik NATO base in favor of the American forces in projection in the Middle Eastern theater, in contrast confirmed the Russian presence in the base of Tartus in Syria and then that Iranian nuclear agreement and the strengthening of the Kurdish militias in Syria and Iraq did not make sure they did not sleep well in Erdogan.
All this made it possible to overcome the size of the linear moves by starting to skip some internal and external opponent pawns, so the horse's move was necessary. This choice will certainly have political consequences, not only internationally, but also internally, the last elections in fact have given rise to a substantial ungovernability of Turkey and the Kurdish parties with double-digit election rates start to have a weight too high not to be considered elements to be silenced, possibly by any means, including the bombing of the armed fringe of the PKK.
Certainly diplomacy agrees to say that the anti-Daesh operation and that against the PKK have nothing in common but the temporal element, but allow it to feed more than some perplexities on the merits of the question, on the other hand, the weakening election of the ruling party and the openings to the Russian gas pipeline needed a counterbalance that held firmly the Atlantic embankment and therefore the themes of the fight against Syrian Baathism and Kurdish communism were an excellent opportunity to further credit the role of Ankara as a regional power .
If everything proceeds according to the timetable, Erdogan's next move could be early elections in November, with the hope that there will be no further complications related to the Greek crisis or the increasingly shaky relations between the US and Russia, but this is another match, or maybe not ?!
(photo: Turkish Armed Forces)
