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.

The latest clashes between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS for short, reportedly broke out on Sept. 18 in the town of Azaz, just across the border from Kilis in Turkey. These are said to have started because the FSA refused to hand over a German doctor to the radical Islamic group for questioning over pictures he took of wounded combatants from the group.

The result, according to press reports from the region, was that Azaz came under ISIS control and this has forced Turkey to close the nearby Oncupinar border crossing with Syria indefinitely. Whatever the real reason behind it may be, this incident shows just how volatile the situation is among the different groups fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime.