The Muslim Brotherhood bears the cost of reset in Mideast

The growing closeness between Riyadh and Ankara is pushing the latter to adopt a more balanced and distanced attitude toward the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization it once embraced wholeheartedly.

Intending to "lead the winds of change in the Middle East," Turkey made supporting a government of its ideological fellow traveler, the Muslim Brotherhood, the linchpin of its Middle East policy. Such moves were not limited to Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, but came to encompass Tunisia, Libya and Syria, drawing Turkey and Qatar closer together while simultaneously driving it further away from the great defender of the status quo, Saudi Arabia. What's more, its failure to adapt its foreign policy line to the changing conditions severely isolated the country in the region.

When Morsi was overthrown in a coup in 2013, the wind started to blow the other way.

The disagreements between Turkey and Saudi Arabia about the Muslim Brotherhood were put on the back burner amid more pressing foreign policy concerns over the nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran, the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and the deepening of the problems in Yemen. In this context, King Salman's accession to the throne enabled both countries to open a new page in bilateral relations.

In the meantime, Iran's rise, which drove the Saudis and other Gulf countries closer to Israel, provided Ankara with an opportunity to improve its ties with Tel Aviv in an effort to end its regional isolation.

While the negotiations to normalize Turkish-Israeli ties might appear to have become bogged down in discussion of the Gaza embargo and Hamas' activities in Turkey, signing the agreement is a matter of time.

In this respect,...