TURKISH LEADERS’ OTTOMAN FANTASIES: Michael Totten Interviews Claire Berlinski. “They are zealots, perhaps, but not quite in the way their critics are imagining. They’re zealots of delusional optimism and overconfidence. They have sincerely convinced themselves that they will be able to befriend Iran, dissuade it from going nuclear, and profit greatly from this relationship in the process. They refuse to entertain the idea that the Iranians view them as useful idiots. . . . What the AKP seems to be missing is this: Iran’s emergence as a nuclear state will overturn the entire regional power equilibrium. Turkey’s vulnerability to this is the most pronounced in NATO, and the AKP’s nonchalance about this is astounding. Neither a massive conventional army nor ‘strategic depth’ are of the slightest value against weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, which is precisely why Iran wants them in the first place—obviously. . . . The mere announcement of the news that Iran has crossed the nuclear threshold will have an immediate, devastating effect on Turkey’s stature—that day will be the last we ever hear about a rising Turkey, Anatolian tigers, the Islamic-economic dynamo, or the revival of the Ottoman Empire.”

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