We start off with the usual crap about how Obama isn't really fully American, a "president disconnected from his nation." Which is something, coming from an American who spends most of his year in Tel Aviv.
Then, Obama, with his magical powers, made Turkey the region's most powerful country through its neo-Ottoman foreign policy. Peretz has a serious problem with this, for reasons he does not want to share with us for the next half of the article. I tried to apply some logic to this (who would Peretz rather be the regions' leader? Saudi Arabia? Iran?), but that is futile at this point in Peretz's writing career. After a little aside of again calling Stephen Walt an anti-Semite, we go several more paragraphs before Peretz remembers that this article is supposed to be about bashing Obama.
Ah! But then we get to Peretz's problem with Turkey, and specifically Erdogan:
Erdogan had raised the passions of Turkey’s own ummah in his movement’s political conflict with both of his enemies, civil society and the military. Trying to use religious extremism also made him captive of its fanatics.Islam! That's the problem!
Look, I know that the man can be a bit dominating in person, but does The New Republic not have any able copy editors able to improve this crap who aren't afraid of him? As an institution, TNR can't be that afraid of Peretz, they did fire - um - change his title a while back.
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