Governments which refused asylum to the Kurdish rebel leader, Mr Abdullah Ocalan, are unlikely to be thanked by Ankara, where the military has taken full credit for his arrest, and are already being condemned by Kurdish militants based in Europe and the Middle East.
Last year Ankara adopted a hardline attitude towards any country prepared to offer Mr Ocalan sanctuary.
In October the Turkish army massed troops along its southern border with Syria and threatened military action if Mr Ocalan and fighters from the military wing of his Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) were not expelled from Syria and the northern Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.
Once driven from Damascus, where he had been living since 1981, Mr Ocalan was treated as a pariah by the international community.
From Syria he flew to Russia which promptly sent him to Italy where he remained for three months, pending a court decision on his request for political asylum.
When this was denied he travelled to Corfu from where he was taken secretly to Nairobi and given temporary refuge in the Greek embassy until permanent asylum could be arranged.
Athens was caught between Turkey, which had issued unspecified threats against Greece if Mr Ocalan was allowed to settle there, and the PKK, which prevailed upon friendly members of the Greek parliament to exert pressure on the socialist government of Mr Costas Simitis to permit the Kurdish leader to reside in Greece.
Mr Simitis now stands accused by the Kurds, members of his own party and by the Cyprus Committee for Solidarity with Kurdistan of conspiring with Kenya to hand over Mr Ocalan to Turkey. But Mr Simitis cannot count on a political dividend from Ankara because he capitulated to its threats. It is unlikely that Greek-Turkish antagonisms will diminish.
Furthermore, neither Italy, which rejected Turkey's demand for the extradition of Mr Ocalan, nor Germany, which refused to activate its own warrant for his arrest, should expect gratitude from Ankara.
All these countries face retaliation from Kurds in Europe and elsewhere. PKK militants can count on the support of not only hundreds of thousands of Kurds of Turkish origin but also of those from Iran, Iraq and Syria for whom Mr Ocalan has become a symbol of Kurdish self-determination.
Yesterday Greek embassies and consulates in a dozen European countries were occupied by Kurdish activists and Greek diplomats taken hostage, several premises being evacuated after the Greek Foreign Minister, Mr Theodoros Pangalos, threatened severe retaliation against Kurds in Greece and abroad.
Ms Mizgin Sen, a Kurdish spokeswoman in Brussels, predicted a strong Kurdish reaction inside Turkey. She told The Irish Times that "no [European] plan of action has been worked out but the Kurdish people would work through democratic means".
A spokesman in Nicosia said that the PKK was urging Kurds living in exile not to take unilateral action but remarked that violence by individuals could not be ruled out.
In a statement issued last weekend as Mr Ocalan's search for refuge reached crisis point, the PKK's Central Committee charged the international community, particularly Europe, with unprecedented hostility towards the Kurdish people and its leadership, claiming that no other dissident leader had been subjected to "such savage attack" or been "proclaimed an undesirable alien of the earth".
And the movement warned: "Neither our party nor our people can be held responsible for the . . . dramatic consequences of the current situation."