Turkey’s Arab-Spring Problem - PETER VINE

http://www.warisboring.com/2011/08/18/turkeys-arab-spring-problem/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WarIsBoring+%28War+Is+Boring%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Most worryingly of all, as the protests inch closer and closer to home, Turkey faces an unprecedented foreign policy challenge as a tense Lebanon combines with a mass protest movement in Israel, a surge in violence in Iraq and a Syria in meltdown.

This has seen Turkey in some ways revert to type as its unilateral tendencies start to re-appear. Already Turkey has darkly hinted that what is happening in Syria is an “internal Turkish matter” as it frets about the possibility of a long porous border becoming a backdoor for Kurdish terrorism. Nobody is predicting a Turkish intervention in Syria, but then again few had predicted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.