Davutoğlu's lost soul found at the Presidential Palace

The optimists were optimistic that former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's forced de-parture in May and his replacement with the pragmatic Binali Yıldırım would recalibrate Turkey's Sunni Islamist-based foreign (and domestic) policy. This columnist voiced hope that the optimists were right but predicted they were not. Call it blind faith in President Re-cep Tayyip Erdoğan's political codes.

The optimists became more optimistic after the putsch attempt of July 15 when Mr. Erdoğan showed signs of less polarization and Mr. Yıldırım's more reconciliatory (and often, even, sympathetic) political language eased tensions that had piled up over the past 14 years. Little, if any, seems to have changed since the changing of the guards at the prime minister's seat.

President Erdoğan has a serious religio-political problem with Turkey's international sta-tus, including its borders. Last week, he made overtly revisionist statements, including that "Turkey did not voluntarily accept its current borders," with further implication of his self-righteous desire to change the borders: "We cannot act in the year 2016 with the psychol-ogy of 1923. To insist on [the borders accepted in 1923] is the greatest injustice to be done to the country and to the nation."

He did not explain how he plans to correct the "greatest injustice" (remember how often Mr. Davutoğlu spoke of "correcting the wrong flow of history?") that Turkey's 1923 bor-ders remain where they are today. He owes his nation and the nations concerned an honest explanation: First, does he think that the foreign nations concerned will think he is totally right and surrender some of their territories to Turkey in a new border agreement?

If not, and of course they will not, how does he plan to...

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