I think that's a very tough question. It's obvious that Turkey is a NATO partner and played significantly important role during and after the Cold War. As you mentioned, Turkey was part of the west, acting in harmony with NATO with its allies.
On the other hand, it's also true that Turkey is located in a very problematic region. Especially after the Arab Spring, the region was quite unstable. This is a big question to discuss about which policies or approaches contributed to this mess and this complexity, and the resulting problems that we face nowadays.
On the other hand, Turkey helped Syrian refugees by opening its borders, but what would happen if Turkey had closed its borders? Most probably it was a very realistic choice to open the borders. I can understand humanitarian aspects of the decision-making process in Turkey. I can understand that the Turkish government did not act only according to its own interests, but I can't ignore the fact that the Turkish government is also using the chaos and instability in Syria for its own foreign policy nowadays.
When I look at the picture and what is going on in Syria, at Turkey's foreign policy generally, Turkey as a NATO partner is buying weapons systems from Russia. It's co-operating with the Russian military in the field in Syria. The Russian military opens the airspace that it controls in Syria to Turkey, so that Turkey can attack or bomb our friend the YPG, which it considers to be a terrorist group. Yet we know that this group has never attacked Turkey. Those people have been living in this part of Syria and are not PKK members.