Turkey has not been lost to the west. Not yet, anyway. What has happened is that the terms of engagement have changed. Turkey is no longer the pliant supplicant that many in the US and Europe imagined it would forever remain. It feels like another country. Economically vibrant and politically self-confident, it has outgrown the role allotted to it by the west.
The fashionable story about Turkey is of a nation wilfully turning eastwards: eschewing western democracy for Islamism at home and looking east to reclaim leadership in the lands of the former Ottoman empire. Snubbed by the west, Ankara has been repairing relations in its own neighbourhood. It has exploited economic and diplomatic opportunities to assert itself in its own region.
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