Turkey’s Syria nightmare keeps going from bad to worse. Ankara is already smarting that Syrian Kurds with close links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have taken control over some areas adjoining the Turkish border. It has to contend with the possibility that an al-Qaeda-affiliated group may entrench itself in another swath of land adjoining Turkey.
Not surprisingly Turkish commentators have already started referring to certain regions along the highly porous border with Syria, which is nearly 900 kilometers [560 miles] long, as “Turkey’s North-West Frontier Province,” a reference to the lawless region of Pakistan that is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism.
