World Affairs Journal - Smile and Smile: Turkey's Feel-Good Foreign Policy: The utter irrationality of Turks—and the utter uselessness, for them, of our Western notions of truth and logic—are points Americans won’t grasp unless they’ve lived here quite some time—and even then they won’t grasp them, because they make no sense. But they’d best begin to try, because the prime minister is quite busy sending flotillas of unusually fractious Turkish humanitarians into war zones, transforming himself into the improbable hero of Hamas, and practicing nuclear diplomacy à la Turca. American negotiators were no doubt scratching their heads upon learning that Turkey had not merely abstained from voting on the Iranian sanctions package, but voted against it. An abstention, after all, would have registered Turkish misgivings more than adequately; the “no” vote manifestly obviates everything Turkey has long been saying about the role it seeks to play as a bridge between the East and the West, particularly in the wake of the Gaza flotilla fiasco. The bridge is now burnt. Turkey has taken sides, and the winner is the East.
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