Listening to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in a hall of a five-star hotel in Istanbul, I was thinking how diplomacy is in a way a dance of words, and differences of opinions on how that dance should be choreographed affects the fate of millions of people and could cost thousands of lives.
Following the increasing pace and intensity of criticisms directed against Turkey’s Syria policy following the car bombs in the border town of Reyhanli on May 11 and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Washington visit and meetings with US President Barack Obama on May 16, Davutoglu did something he had been neglecting for some time. He invited about 20 columnists and opinion leaders to the Conrad Hotel in Istanbul and spoke to them for a full three hours on Turkey’s Syria policy — step by step, phase by phase. As we were leaving the hall, I said to an adviser of the minister that I was expecting to be called to breakfast the next morning to continue discussing Syria.
