What is Turkey's game?
Within a week, it has gone from a reluctant observer, abstaining from military action against so-called Islamic State, to full-blown military strikes against the group, opening up its bases to coalition attacks and, simultaneously, the first aerial bombing of PKK Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq in four years.
Why the sudden turnaround?
For months, Ankara resisted military involvement in the US-led coalition of the willing. It insisted that the attacks also target President Bashar al-Assad's forces. Washington's reply was, in effect, that the immediate concern was IS and that the "Assad problem" needed to be put on the back burner.