I’ve never found myself in this situation, but Jim Geraghty’s disillusionment with politics and society in Turkey (see here and here) is unwarranted. Look — Turkey is an Islamic nation in the Middle East, and pretty much everyone in the Middle East thinks America runs the world and the Jews run America. The only reason people might expect otherwise is that they’ve swallowed the hokum about shared values with a fellow “democracy” and friend of Israel. Maybe my Realist slip is showing, but if it’s useful to ally with Turkey (as it was during the Cold War), then let’s do it, and if it’s not (as during Turkey’s quasi-alliance with Hitler), then we won’t. Our goal in the Islamic world is more-benign governments, and Turkey’s is benign by regional standards. But if we start expecting miracles, we’re going to continually be disappointed.