Sky's Foreign Affairs Editor Sam Kiley Explains
Channel: news all the world
Date: 25/07/2015

President Erdogan's decision to bomb the group and let the US use a key air base inevitably risks more revenge attacks.As a fulcrum of empires for millennia, Turkey straddles the straits between Europe and Asia giving the lie to Kipling's adage that "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet" – but the balancing act can be mortally dangerous.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Muslim conservative president, has sought a balance between remaining an important member of NATO, vocally calling for international intervention against Bashar al Assad, and containing the spread of so-called Islamic State’s violent extremism into his own country.
This week the scales have been tipping dangerously, forcing an escalation against IS – and that may be exactly what the death cult wants.On Monday, 32 civilians were murdered by a suicide bomber in Suruc – an attack on a mostly ethnic Kurd group preparing to take aid into Kobane, the Syrian town recently liberated from IS.The killer was a Kurd but a member of IS, Turkish authorities say.