For Ankara,the Assad regime's fall was desirable - provided someone else did the actual fighting. But Bashar al-Assad's survival,while troubling,did not rise to the level of a worst-case scenario. As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shown withhis Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin andIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,even the most damaged diplomatic relationship is not beyond repair.
For Ankara,the worst-case scenario began to take shape in early August,when a US-backed,Kurdish-led force managed toliberate the Syrian town of Manbij from Islamic State. The nightmare of the Turkish government and military has always been that Syria's entire northern border would be held by Kurdish militia.
Those who say that Turkey has been waiting for an excuse to intervene are deluded. When a tiny sliver of Turkish heritage in the north of Syria came under threat,Turkey had an excuse. Instead itstole into Syria,rescued the remains of its national hero and stole back across the border before the Syrian regime could even email a complaint to the UN.
Before that there was thehumanitarian crisis at Kobane,where a town full of Kurds was overrun by IS as the world stood by. Fairfax correspondent Ruth Pollard travelled to that frontier and watched as Turkish troops,less than a kilometre from the fighting,beat and gassed Kurdish protesters on their side of the border,their backs turned to Syria.