Cuba, Turkey and the unbearable feeling of loneliness

It takes courage to accept failure. U.S. President Barack Obama has shown the world that he can learn from the facts and abandon a long-failed policy – because U.S. policy toward Cuba has been a disaster, a remnant of the 20th century. The president’s actions this week set the stage: No more 20th century obstacles to U.S. policy making. A country with unresolved issues from the last century cannot lead in the present. Obama just showed that Americans have the courage to lead again, and lead by example.

Turkey, meanwhile, is a country not only burdened with 20th century problems, but also quite a few from the 19th century. Such a country cannot be a regional anything. We urgently need to come to terms with our own history and neighborhood. Yet we seem to be going the opposite way. Not only are we not tackling these old problems, we are creating new ones.

We used to complain in Turkey that the Americans were telling us to mend fences with our neighbors rather than worrying about their own. There are no direct flights to Cuba, after all, because Americans weren’t allowed to travel there. In this age of constant connectivity, American cellphones do not function on the island, as there is no roaming agreement between the countries’ companies.

Now Obama has decided to pick up where his predecessors stopped nearly half a century ago. Think about it: Every president since Kennedy has chosen to continue the embargo that was supposed to bring Castro to his knees. All the while, evidence was mounting against the policy. Jimmy Carter, coming from an ideological place, wanted to restart relations with Havana on the condition that it withdraws its troops from Angola. Castro did not budge. Twenty years into the blockade, isolation was by that...