Social tensions are considerably higher in recent days in Turkey and that's something that the international media failed to notice so far, although it may indeed be related to international issues.
Two eruptions, one ethnic and one sectarian, have been observed in Turkey in the last couple of days.
Firstly, the home of an Alevi family was stoned and their stables burned down by an angry mob in the southeastern Malatya province, after the family allegedly told a Ramadan drummer not to wake them for suhoor, the last pre-dawn meal before fasting. The Sunni mob argue that the family insulted their religion, while the Alevi family defended that they were singled out as a target without any justification.
Then, in downtown Istanbul last night, Kurdish construction workers, who had allegedly molested young women in the neighborhood, were attacked by a local mob in an all-out street brawl of 600 people. The fight continued unabated until suhoor. The construction workers quited their jobs and returned to their eastern villages today.
Strikingly, this unprecedented, but extremely dangerous trend coincides with what is happening in Syria nowadays.
Can Ankara's foreign policy in Syria really affect Turkey's domestic stability?
It is clear that Turkey wants to get rid of the Alevi regime in Syria as soon as possible, so it tries to do everything to support its armed foes, who are mostly Sunnis.
While doing so, the Erdogan government managed to open Pandora's box in Syria by not only fueling a sectarian war there, but also by creating a power vacuum in the north of this country, which led some Syrian Kurds, who are connected to PKK that Ankara defines a terrorist organization, to seize the local administrations.
So, the troubles in Syria are being mirrored in Turkey now and these alarming developments may be summarized with Nietzsche's words:
"When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
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