The West should beware encouraging Turkey to look to the East

Turkey’s decision to send troops into Syria to fight the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who has seen how the country is changing over the past few months. Turkey has become increasingly determined to forge its own way in the world, ignoring the entreaties of western countries, and indeed blaming the West for many of its troubles. The Erdogan government says the YPG is a terrorist organisation that, along with the PKK, is determined to do Turkey harm.

When I visited Istanbul, Gaziantep and Izmir in December, the most striking thing about my meetings with political figures and members of civil society was how furious they were that western countries didn’t acknowledge this, and that the United States had in fact been supporting the YPG. It was often difficult to get a word in edgeways once someone had dropped the letters PKK into conversation.