Turkey's Euphrates Shield changed the Syria game

Turkey started its military operation into Syria on Aug. 24, 2016, following a suicide attack by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), or DEASH with its Arabic initials, that killed 59 civilians in the border city of Gaziantep on Aug. 20.

That was seen as an ambitious move by many countries, both in the NATO system that Turkey is a part of and NATO rivals like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, which are also players in the Syria theater. That's because just five weeks before, there was a military coup attempt on July 15 that was widely believed to have been masterminded by Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Islamist preacher living in the United States. Thousands of members and key unit commanders of the Land, Air and Naval Forces were detained, dismissed from the army, caught red-handed or believed to have been involved in a parallel chain of command with Gülen, who used to be a close ally of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) but later became an archrival. Nobody really thought that under those circumstances, the Turkish military, despite being the second biggest in the NATO system, would dare to launch a major operation in war-torn Syria.

But it did; President Tayyip Erdoğan gave orders to Gen. Hulusi Akar, the chief of General Staff, to start the "Operation Euphrates Shield" with two aims:

1- To end the physical access of ISIL to the Turkish border and push it away from its territory to stop any abuse of it for the transport of militants, weapons and smuggling.

2- To prevent the area to be cleared of ISIL from being filled by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syria extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which enjoys the backing of U.S. forces.

The first aim was also important to cut...