But Davutoglu’s vision extended far beyond securing the neighborhood for Turkish commerce. One of his pet theories is that the United States needs Turkey as a sensitive instrument in remote places. “The United States,” he says, in his declamatory way, “is the only global power in the history of humanity which emerged far away from the mainland of humanity,” which Davutoglu calls Afro-Eurasia. The United States has the advantage of security and the disadvantage of “discontinuity,” in regard to geography as well as history, because America has no deep historic relationship to the Middle East or Asia. In Davutoglu’s terms, the U.S. has no strategic depth; Turkey has much. “A global power like this, a regional power like that have an excellent partnership,” Davutoglu concludes with a flourish. Turkey has used its web of relations, especially in the Sunni world, to advance American interests in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Turkey recently agreed to renew its NATO mandate as the commander of the troop contingent in Kabul.

Image Credit... Peter Yang for The New York Times

In 2007, Turkey put itself forward as a Middle East peacemaker. Ottoman Turkey was a safe harbor for Jews when much of Europe was aflame with anti-Semitism. And Republican, secular Turkey was Israel’s most dependable ally in the Middle East. Many Turkish Islamists despise Israel, but Erdogan and the AK adopted a more diplomatic line. Erdogan visited Israel in 2004, and in 2007 Turkey invited Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, to address Parliament — a rare honor. Turkish leaders then sought to broker talks between Syria and Israel over the return of the Golan Heights to Syria. At the time, the Bush administration had cut off relations with Syria, which it viewed as a proxy for Iran; but Israel was eager for an interlocutor with Damascus. The role of go-between “was not assigned to Turkey by any outside actor,” Davutoglu wrote in an essay in Foreign Policy. Turkey assigned the task to itself under a principle he called “proactive and pre-emptive peace diplomacy.” This is what it means to be part of “we.”

Davutoglu says he shuttled between the capitals 20 times in 2007, and in 2008 he brought both sides to Istanbul for five rounds of talks in separate hotels. He carried messages back and forth between the two. Israel needed to be convinced that Syria was prepared to stop sponsoring Hezbollah and to distance itself from Iran. Syria demanded that Israel clarify the territory from which it was prepared to withdraw. By late December, Davutoglu and his aides say, only disagreement over a word or two prevented the two sides from moving to direct talks. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel held a five-hour dinner at Erdogan’s home, in the course of which both men spoke to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Davutoglu had reserved a hotel room for the direct talks. An Israeli official close to the negotiations confirmed this account, saying that Davutoglu “played a very important role, a very professional role” and agreeing that face-to-face talks seemed to be in the offing. Olmert himself was quoted earlier this year as calling Erdogan “a fair mediator” and as saying, “We need negotiations with Turkish mediation.”

But it was all what might have been, for only a few days after the meeting, Israel launched its Cast Lead invasion of Gaza, inflaming the Arab world and humiliating and infuriating Erdogan. The talks collapsed. The Israeli official says, “We told the Turks that we will have to respond” to the hail of missiles coming from Gaza; Israel had not deceived the Turks, because Israel’s cabinet authorized the invasion days after the Olmert-Erdogan dinner. That’s not how Turkey saw the sequence of events. It was, Davutoglu says solemnly, “an insult to Turkey.” Certainly the Turkish public felt it as one, and Erdogan, a shrewd judge of public opinion, understood that very well. Turkey is a democracy, after all; and the public reaction to Gaza, on top of the rebuff from the European Union — and perhaps also the inherent logic of the “zero problems” policy — sent the country in a new direction.

Turkey’s interests in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and for that matter in Israel, coincided with those of the United States and the West. But its run of luck ended in Iran. In September 2009, the Iranians, under pressure from the West to show that they were not seeking to build a nuclear weapon, offered to send 1,200 kilograms of uranium abroad in exchange for an equal amount to be enriched sufficiently for civilian use. Iran didn’t trust any Western country to hold its uranium; but it might trust Turkey. Davutoglu sprang into action, flying back and forth to Tehran to work out the details — over which the Iranians, typically, bickered and stalled.

The cables recently disclosed by WikiLeaks vividly illustrate the tensions this produced with Washington. In a meeting with the assistant secretary of state Philip Gordon in Ankara in November 2009, Davutoglu advanced his theory of Turkish exceptionalism: “Only Turkey,” he said, “can speak bluntly and critically to the Iranians.” Davutoglu was confident that Iran was ready to strike a deal — with Turkey’s help. An obviously skeptical Gordon “pressed” him on his “assessment of the consequences if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.” In what the cable’s author described as “a spirited reply,” Davutoglu insisted that Turkey was well aware of the risk. Gordon “pushed back that Ankara should give a stern public message” to Iran; Davutoglu replied that they were doing so in private and “emphasized that Turkey’s foreign policy is giving ‘a sense of justice’ and ‘a sense of vision’ to the region.”

Behind this tense exchange with Gordon was the fear that Turkey was cutting Iran too much slack. Davutoglu is quite open about the fact that Turkey has interests in Iran that the United States and Europe do not have. “Our economy is growing,” Davutoglu told me, “and Iran is the only land corridor for us to reach Asia. Iran is the second source of energy for Turkey.” Sanctions on Iran would hurt Turkey. But Davutoglu also insists that Turkey’s assessment of Iran’s intentions is not affected by its interests. It’s easy to see why Gordon was skeptical. Prime Minister Erdogan has dismissed fears that Iran wants to build a bomb as “gossip.” And when I asked one of Davutoglu’s senior aides about the matter, he said: “For the time being, Iran does not have a nuclear-weapons program. We don’t know whether they will go there.”