Western diplomats were quick to anticipate that Turkey would take satisfaction from seeing Greece so economically vulnerable and politically unstable after its debt crisis.
Rather surprisingly, Greece's difficulties have inspired sympathy among Turkish opinion makers, who have expressed concern for the future of the EU.
According to most Turkish commentators, the Greek crisis should be seen as an EU issue. Indeed, Mahfi Eğilmez, a columnist in the Milliyet daily, told EurActiv Turkey in an interview that the euro zone had enlarged too rapidly.
Unlike the EU, Turkey did not harbour illusions about Greece's economic performance when it joined the euro zone or the false statistical reports that Athens submitted to the European Commission.
Rather than blindness, the EU has tended to overlook the huge economic imbalances inside the euro zone, according to Turkish commentators. Economists in Turkey fear that unbalanced growth in the EU will result in new crises in the near future.
Analyst Osman Ulagay told EurActiv Turkey that in his view, the Union had enlarged too hastily. "The unbalanced and inequal growth in the EU will inevitably result in new crises," he said.
"If the EU had been as demanding to its members on making them obey the rules as it is towards Turkey, then there wouldn't have been a 27-member EU and nobody would be facing this sort of crisis," Ulagay claimed.
Some Turkish commentators believe Europe would have been better equipped to deal with the Greek crisis if it had learned from Turkey's experience.
Istanbul-born economist Nouriel Roubini says the current turmoil in Greece would not have occurred if EU members had looked to Turkey and copied its reform effort after the 2001 crisis, the daily Hurriyet wrote.
Indeed, in the 1990s Turkey experienced an acute recession, in the context of a lack of leadership and widespread corruption. Reforms initiated by the finance minister at the time, Kemal Derviş, rapidly changed Turkey's economic landscape.
