Keep your eye on Turkey. The moderate Islamic democracy is surrounded by global mayhem and its long-standing friendship with the United States is fraying. A quick look at a map of the Middle East confirms Turkey’s geographic position in the eye of a perfect geopolitical storm.

Several Middle Eastern news agencies, citing anonymous sources, say Turkish military forces are massing at the country’s southeaster border with Syria and are preparing a southward invasion into Syria the second week of July. One pro-government newspaper reports that 18,000 troops are preparing for an incursion into north Syria to establish a military buffer zone.

The primary objective, of course, is to thwart the spread of the outlaw Islamic State that has gained control of a large swath of Syria and Iraq. But there are secondary objectives: pressing Syrian President Bashar Assad out of power; and negating attempts by Kurdish separatists from carving an autonomous region out of north Syrian territory, complete with access to the Mediterranean Sea.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared that Turkey will never allow establishment of a Kurdish nation on Syrian soil. Tacit backing of the Kurds by the Obama administration has further irritated the Turkish government while cooling U.S.-Turkish relations.

While Turkey knocks on Syria’s — and ISIS’, and the Kurds’ — northern door, economic calamity is unfolding in Greece, at Turkey’s western doorstep. The Greeks, in deep debt and under severe economic pressure, conducted a referendum vote Sunday on the question of accepting further and deeper concession that might buy Greece a little more time; Analysts say a “no” vote could set up the country’s departure from the European Union.

And to the east, Iran is locked in multinational negotiations to determine that nation’s nuclear future; and the former Soviet states, Georgia and Armenia maintain, at best, a tenuous regard for each other and their former parent, Moscow.

Any of these contrary forces could give way — and Turkey’s invasion of Syria/Islamic State/Kurdish homeland could be the catalytic spark that ignites all the crises at once.

Let’s hope none of this doomsday scenario takes place. But if it does, it would be a good thing to know which way to look for the punch.