Turkey’s inability to produce a realistic strategy toward Syria and to coordinate its policy with its allies is coming home to roost, leaving it facing multiple dilemmas that are unlikely to be resolved soon. Ankara’s war with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its related effort to prevent Kurds from gaining ground in northern Syria remains Turkey’s main problems.

This complicates, if not prevents, headway by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS) in the region. Washington, by its own admittance, is trying to maintain a delicate balance between Ankara and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the umbrella organization of the Syrian Kurds, which Turkey says is a terrorist group linked to the PKK.

While acknowledging that the PKK is a terrorist organization, Washington has refused to do the same for the PYD and its military wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), with which it is allied against IS.

The successes against IS by the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — at least 60% of which are made up of YPG fighters — also contrasts sharply with the failure of groups supported by Ankara to make any headway against the Bashar al-Assad regime or IS.