Turkey has now announced it will participate in struggle against ISIL; an operation which has so seriously engaged NATO and its allies for the past two years and one from which Turkey has largely opted out. Turkey announced it will bomb the ISIL positions and will also extend these bomb attacks to the 'terrorist' Kurds. It has sought NATO concurrence in this policy and promised to allow the U.S. to return to the air base in Incirlik to conduct its own bombing of ISIL in Syria and Iraq.

This is a marked turnaround in Turkish policy as Turkey has been a major supplier of weapons, explosives, transport, cash and support to its Syrian client, the Al-Nusra Front (affiliated to Al Qaeda), and to the ISIL directly. Northern Syria is awash with agents of the Turkish Mille Istihbarat Teskilati - MIT (the national intelligence agency) who operate the import of weapons to ISIL, the transport of foreign fighters to Syria, the delivery of ammonium nitrate from Turkey to the bomb makers of Raqqa; the smuggling of medicines and food to ISIL and the international marketing of Syrian oil. The MIT and the oil smugglers have become the ISIL paymasters.

Now Erdogan expects NATO to believe that he has abandoned his support for ISIL and will turn his army and air force to the task of destroying them, and to the destruction of the Kurdish PKK. One may well ask what has brought him to that decision. There is an old Turkish saying, 'Ateş olmayan yerden duman ıkmaz' (Every why has its wherefore). The conversion of Erdogan to an anti-ISIL fighter was the result of two major factors: (a) the 13 per cent of the vote gained by the mainly-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) in the last election which kept Erdogan's AKP party from maintaining its majority in the parliament; and (2) the military victories of the Kurdish forces on the ground in both Syria and Iraq. In both cases the rise in the power and legitimacy of the Kurds as 'players' in the region threatened Turkish hegemony and raised the possibility of Kurdish autonomy in and around Turkey.

In recent months the Kurdish Syrian YPD fighters allied to the Syrian Democratic Unity Party (the party of the Syrian Kurds) have made many strides forward in battling ISIL despite the fact that the Turkish Army stood by and did nothing when ISIL attacked the YPG in the battle for the control of Kobane. Despite the Turks the YPG fighters drove back the ISIL forces and captured a lot of territory in Northern Syria along the Turkish border; in three separate areas.

The Turks are determined that these three areas (in green above) will not be able to join together into a single contiguous large area which would be a self-contained Kurdish area in Syria on its border. Across the northern border are found many of the Turkish Kurds who might be willing to join up in an effort to promote Kurdish autonomy.

This area is known as Rojava or Western Kurdistan. It is a de facto autonomous region which gained its autonomy in November 2013 as part of the Rojava campaign. Rojava consists of the three non-contiguous cantons of (from east to west) Jazira, Kobani and Afrin. Rojava is not officially recognized as autonomous by the governments of Syria or Turkey and is at war with ISIL. Kurds generally consider Rojava to be one of the four parts of a greater Kurdistan, which also includes parts of southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan) and western Iran (Eastern Kurdistan. In July 2015 two of the three cantons have joined together after fierce battles with ISIL.

With the Jazeera and Kobani cantons now united, the Kurds control a long contiguous stretch of the Syria-Turkey border. The Turks fear that the Kurds could seek to unite the canton of Kobani/Jazeera with the third autonomous zone, further west, around the city of Afrin. This would be an important step in creating a Greater Kurdistan.

What the Turks have been demanding from NATO is the creation of a 'safe zone' which will stop the Kurds from capturing the territory in Northern Syria from joining up with the cantons that have already been united by the YPG. If the YPG succeed in creating a region which they dominate across the whole of Northern Syria it will prevent the Turks from continuing to provide aid, arms and assistance to their clients in Syria; both Al-Nusra and ISIL. They had to find a reason to re-energise and legitimise their attacks on the Kurds by ending the 'cease-fire' with the Kurds which had ended the Turkish Kurdish War on 21 March 2013. In July 2015 the Turks resumed the aerial bombardment of the Kurdish PKK positions in Iraq as well as some ISIL groups in Syria.

The NATO discussions in Brussels focused on the long-standing Turkish idea of creating a limited 'safe zone' within Syria in the area between Azaz, a border town north of Aleppo, and Jarablus on the Euphrates River, in territory currently under Islamic State control. This would effectively prevent the YPG from linking Kurdish held areas in the east and west of the country, and provide a training ground and regrouping area for rebel forces, as well as a safe haven for internally displaced Syrians. In return for U.S. support, Turkey granted the long-standing U.S. request to use the Incirlik airbase and other military facilities in southern Turkey to launch bombing raids against the Islamic State.

However, although NATO approved the mobilisation of Turkey in the battle against ISIL it warned Turkey not to resume the war against the Kurds which was brought to a close in 2013. It was not just the U.S. who warned the Turks about the need to preserve the Kurdish forces as the only real fighting force against the ISIL terrorists in both Iraq and Syria. One of the strongest warnings also came from Germany, whose Bundeswehr units are stationed in south eastern Turkey, in Kahramanmaraş, and anxious about the Turkish open support for ISIL. It is not likely that Turkey will pay too much attention to what the others in NATO want as long as they got the NATO agreement on the ''safe zone'.

Erdogan and the AKP are sure that the politisation of the Kurdish role in Syria will make a dent in the electoral support for the HDP and, if they are unable to find a coalition partner, the AKP can call a new election and spur on the Turkish nationalists to turn away from the Kurdish-dominated HDP and return the AKP to its majority in the parliament.