With developments in neighboring Syria getting out of hand and momentous developments in the offing following Iran’s decision to make its peace with the West, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu are learning the hard way that international politics is a complicated affair requiring realistic appraisals as to what is possible and what is not.
Turkey today is not the “leading country” Erdogan and Davutoglu once hoped to make it in the Middle East and the Islamic world at large. Rather, it is a country that is forced to react to adverse developments without a clearly defined master plan of what it is realistically trying to achieve.