Risks and opportunities for Greece and Turkey

Bashar al-Assad's overthrow was not so unexpected after all. He had created all the conditions to make his ouster ripe, resting on the laurels of his dominance and Syria's return to the Arab League, which he saw as an admission of fault from those who supported his rivals and a sacred font where he washed away his sins. He paid the price for underestimating the rebels, who, with the help of foreign forces, chiefly Turkey, were able to organize their offensive.

The big winner right now is Turkey, which has received a strong boost of confidence and revived its plan (first hatched in 2010) for creating zones of control and influence stretching from North Africa to the Middle East. Some are talking about the realization of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's neo-Ottoman vision, but the fact is that Syria is a much more complicated matter compared to Libya, while all the...