A showcase congress in Istanbul

The World Energy Congress held in Istanbul was boycotted by some countries, scorned or ignored by some others… Was the absence of Iran and Iraq newsworthy? Indeed. But that was all. Their presence would have meant a lot. In international diplomacy, rebuffing a platform where a country might have the chance to explain its views on an issue can best be described as counterproductive. Is diplomacy not the act of dialogue and seeking resolutions to problems through talking rather than yelling at a distance?

The two countries might have been angry with Turkey's Operation Euphrates Shield. The central Iraqi government has been particularly dead-set against the probability of Turkey engaging in an international force to liberate Mosul. Indeed, for totally selfish and perhaps egotistical reasons, many Turks would support the Iraqi demand that Turks should stay at home and let the Mosul war be staged by the Americans, Iraqis and whoever else the Baghdad government deems appropriate. Why would Turks die for the liberation of a city that the Iraqi army voluntarily, willingly and without firing a shot surrendered to the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) militia more than two years ago? The war is most definitely not a Turkish war.

Indeed, why has Turkey been staging the Operation Euphrates Shield? Who guarantees that the "mild Islamist militia" that Turkey has been helping to root out ISIL from the border areas will not be even more carnivorous tomorrow? Well, if the problem was not just ISIL but at the same time there was a need to effectively fence off the Turkish border areas with Syria, cut off the connection of the two Kurdish cantons along the Turkish border and kill the aspirations of the Kurds for an independent state, it might become clear why...