I’ve long had a soft spot for Turkey. I once even argued that if the European Union wouldn’t admit Turkey, we should invite Turkey to join Nafta. Why? Because I think it really matters whether Turkey is a bridge or ditch between the Judeo-Christian West and the Arab and Muslim East. Turkey’s role in balancing and interpreting East and West is one of the critical pivot points that helps keep the world stable. ~Thomas Friedman

Yes, that’s what he thinks, right up until Turkey attempts to mediate the Iranian nuclear issue and reaches an agreement on nuclear fuel with Iran. At that point, it is suddenly “as ugly as it gets” and Erdogan has somehow sold out his democratic principles and betrayed Iran’s opposition. But, hey, that was last week. This week, Friedman wants Turkey to be a bridge again.

One of the things that often escapes notice about the AKP government here in the U.S. is that it is actually very popular among Turkish business interests on account of its economic reforms and reasonably capable management over the last eight years. When one considers the political alternative, it’s not surprising that the AKP has their support. The CHP recently elected its new party leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, whose bold new leadership involves repeating a lot of socialist bromides, so right now there is not much of a serious political challenge to Erdogan coming from the Turkish left. The economic relationships Turkey has been cultivating with Syria, Iran, and Russia, among others, are a natural result of Turkish prosperity and ultimately come from the same “pro-market” impulses that made the AKP a strong proponent of EU membership for Turkey. Friedman seems confused about how bridges work. A bridge must connect both sides of a divide, which means that Turkey will have to remain as connected to the Near East and its Muslim neighbors as it is to Europe. Last week, Friedman was horrified that Turkey was actually having dealings with people on the “other side” of the bridge he thinks is so important.

The trouble that a lot of Americans seem to have with all this is that whenever Turkey deviates from Washington’s script they view Turkey’s relations with its eastern and northern neighbors as evidence of a “drift” out of the orbit of the West. Of course, we are the ones drawing the lines and defining Turkish behavior such that they cannot pursue their interests without being perceived as a competitor or worse. In many parts of the world the U.S. encourages and welcomes economic cooperation and improved relations between neighbors, but in other regions the very same behaviors that we laud in Europe are viewed with suspicion and alarm. After a while, any nation, even one with a long-standing good relationship with the U.S., would grow weary of this treatment.

Turkey sacrificed its economic interests for the sake of maintaining Iraq sanctions in the ’90s and early 2000s, and then on the heels of that the U.S. proposed turning one of the neighboring countries into a war zone with obvious security implications for Turkey. On Iran, we expect them to put their interests second to supporting our irrational obsession with Iran’s nuclear program. We insist that Turkey take positions that don’t benefit it in the least, and then find fault with them when they refuse. Instead of accepting their assistance as a credible mediator in Near Eastern affairs, we tend to treat their efforts at mediation as unwanted interference or as something actually harmful to the U.S. Steven Cook is right that it’s time to “recognize reality” about U.S.-Turkish relations, but part of that involves recognizing how unnecessary many of our disagreements are and how many are products of our own flawed policies in the region.