What can Turkey gain from Nato meeting?

Kurdish rebels have held out against Islamic State in Syria

Turkey's foreign minister says his country expects "solidarity and support from our Nato allies," when alliance members meet in Brussels on Tuesday.

But Nato's Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, speaking to the BBC, says "there has been no request for any substantial NATO military support," ahead of the gathering.

So what's it for and what, if anything, is likely to come out of it?

Meetings under Article 4 of the Nato founding treaty (when members feel their "territorial integrity, political independence or security...is threatened") are unusual.

This is only the fifth such occasion in the alliance's history - all meetings except one were called by Turkey.

Coupled with Turkey's recent decision to attack so-called Islamic State (IS) and Kurdish targets and an upsurge of violence inside Turkey, this feels like a consequential moment.

Turkey's long-awaited involvement in the international coalition against IS, flying combat missions and making its vital airbases available to US jets has been described as a possible "game changer."

There are now reports that the US and Turkey are working together on plans to clear IS from parts of northern Syria near to the Turkish border.

But if the government in Ankara continues to see no difference between IS and the Kurdish PKK - a position repeated on Monday by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu - then its latest move presents the rest of the coalition, in particular the Americans, with a dilemma.

For almost a year, Kurdish rebels (the YPG, closely allied with the PKK) have represented Washington's best hope for confronting IS on the ground in Syria.

Kurdish refugees have fled from Syria into Turkey following attacks by Islamic State

Since the battle for the border town of Kobane, late last year, the Pentagon has forged a successful working relationship with the YPG.

But Turkey has no interest in promoting Kurdish success along its southern border, at a time when its own unresolved Kurdish conflict threatens to explode once more.

In response to Kurdish accusations that Turkish forces shelled YPG positions east and west of Kobane, Turkish officials said the Syrian Kurds were "outside the scope" of current military operations.

Exploiting its position

But the suspicion lingers that Ankara may be looking to exploit its new status as an active participant in the campaign against IS to win support for - or at least mute criticism of - its ongoing battle with the Kurds.

Having requested a Nato meeting, it hopes its concerns about renewed PKK violence, including the killing of two police officers, will fall on sympathetic ears.

Jens Stoltenberg warned Nato support would not be unconditional

But Mr Stoltenberg has indicated that Nato's support cannot be unconditional.

Self-defence, he told the BBC on Sunday, "has to be proportionate."

US officials, too, seem anxious to dispel the impression that Washington might have given Ankara a green light for its actions against the Kurds.

Brett McGurk, the deputy special presidential envoy to the coalition against IS, said there was "no connection" between Turkey's airstrikes on PKK positions in Iraq and recent understandings on how to tackle IS.

But there's the rub: the only Nato member with a front row seat in the war in Syria has always had a very different take on how how to handle the conflict.

Its "connections" are not necessarily that same as everyone else's "connections."

Nato:

• Formed in 1949 to counter the threat of post-war communist expansion as the Soviet Union sought to extend its influence in Europe

• Originally consisting of 12 countries, the organisation expanded to include Greece and Turkey in 1952 and West Germany in 1955. However, then, as now, the alliance was militarily dominated by the US

• The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland became the first former Warsaw Pact countries to gain Nato membership in 1999

• Currently has 28 members. Most recent recruits were Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, which joined in 2004

• Applicant nations: Georgia, Bosnia, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro

Earlier this year, President Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, told Congress that Turkey had "other priorities and other interests" and could not be relied upon to join the fight against IS.

Despite an apparent change of heart, Turkey still sees President Assad as the main problem, not IS.

And after decades of bloody conflict with its own Kurdish population, it's almost pathologically opposed to anything that serves Kurdish interests across the border.

The recent agreement between Washington and Ankara raises the possibility that some of these differences may now be narrower.

But tight-lipped American and Turkish officials are still working on the details.

Presumably these will also be discussed in Brussels.