A two-and-a-half-country union

This is from this column nearly two years ago:

“The bitter truth is that Turkey is too oriental for the European Union, too non-Arab for the Arab League, too non-African for the African Union, too irrelevant for ASEAN and the Union of South American Nations and too western for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (‘The Shanghai Seven?’ Feb. 8, 2013).”

Before Prime Minister (then Foreign Minister) Ahmet Davutoğlu failed to foresee that spring could also blossom on the Arab Street, he was busy masterminding what looked like a “Middle East Steel and Coal Union” – with, of course, Turkey as its leader. It was the moment to feel imperial again!

Borders between the region’s Muslim “brothers” would disappear “a la Schengen.” Trade would prosper (indeed, it did). Sunni Islamists would be the emerging Turkish empire’s own “commonwealth of nations.” Systematic doses of Israel-bashing could always suffice to keep Shia Iran, Shia Hezbollah and Nusayri-ruled Syria docked at the Turkish bay. The failed state Somalia was easy to win with stacks of dollars and – part-time – common faith. And the Maghreb could wait.  

“We believe that [world peace] can only be achieved through a Turkish Islamic Union, where all the countries will be independent in their [local governance], but they will be under one roof, and Turkey will be the spiritual leader of this Turkish Islamic Union.” Thus wrote a Turkish journalist in 2012, reflecting the illusions of grandeur more honestly than what the very important men in Ankara had rather more subtly in their minds.

Instead, a hostile, violent and extremist neighbor has emerged in Syria, a neighbor that goes by the name the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)...