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For a country that turned its back on its southern and eastern flanks for decades, Turkey is proving that little in Middle Eastern geopolitics is permanent. Indeed, Turkish diplomacy is on a roll, and its recent ventures are all about turning its neighbours, once bitter rivals, into allies.As a former imperialist power, Turkey carries baggage that has been difficult to overcome. In his state-building endeavour, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of the Turkish republic, decided to ignore previous Ottoman imperial possessions and their political legacy. He and his successors saw the Arab East as essentially backward and conflict-prone, with little to contribute to Turkey, while the West was offering a model of development, capital and technology to build a modern state. The...