Before the Syrian war erupted four years ago, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or the PKK, an extreme nationalist group that has a long history of committing acts of terrorism against Turkish citizens, enjoyed the active support of the Assad regime, so much so that, on several occasions, Syria and Turkey came close to hostilities.

This bad behaviour was one of the reasons that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan aligned himself with the struggle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s regime, an alliance that has prompted accusations from various quarters that Ankara has colluded with ISIL militants in Iraq.

The Turks’ ambivalent relationship with ISIL, as well as their repeated insistence that the coalition should concentrate all its efforts on removing Assad, have been the main stumbling blocks to closer cooperation between Ankara and the US.

However, now the Turks are paying a heavy price for their double standards so far as Ankara’s dealings with ISIL are concerned. The ISIL suicide bomb attack against the border town of Suruc, in which 32 people were killed and 100 injured, has finally persuaded Erdogan’s government that ISIL poses just as great a threat to Turkey’s security as it does to the rest of the region, including our next door neighbours in Libya.

But if the Suruc bombing has been the catalyst for Erdogan’s change of heart, the Turks’ obsession with the Kurds means that they are still a long way from becoming reliable allies.

What Erdogan needs to understand is that even if he disowns ISIL, he cannot bomb the Kurds and still be considered a dependable ally.