You can't really blame them for betting on the strong horse:

While the West is discussing sanctions against Iran, Turkey is discussing the establishment of a joint industrial area with Iran on their shared border the Iranian state news agency, Fars, reported on Friday. Iran's industry minister, Ali Akbar Mehrabian, met on Friday with Turkey's trade minister, Nahat Argon to discuss increasing economic activities between the two nations. Mehrabian said after the meeting that there was a lot of potential for joint economic activities between the two countries.

These aren't just bilateral moves either. The Turks are also boosting their ties with Syria. They've chosen a side and they're making and breaking alliances accordingly:

Two factors in particular seem to have led to Turkey's shift away from Israel and toward Syria. First, Turkey no longer needed Israeli assistance to pressure the Syrian government to change its policy of providing safe-haven to the terrorist Kurdish Worker's Organization (PKK). Second, in the past seven years, once secular Turkish politics have undergone a profound Islamist transformation. At the same time, the dynamic between the Turkish military and the state's civilian leadership has changed. No longer does the military have the upper hand. Today, the Turkish military can do little to impact the policies of the Islamist AKP, which promote solidarity with Islamist, anti-Western regimes while dismissing secular, pro-Western Muslim governments.

That also answers the brainteasers that were getting thrown around mid-2009, about whether Turkey can be politically moved in a secular direction. Turns out when a population keeps electing Islamists who promise to move away from the West, the country ends up moving away from the West. And I was really hoping they were just kidding about all that.

Meanwhile the State Department is trying to jumpstart Israeli-Syrian negotiations via Turkish mediation. Because apparently - at least to George Mitchell - the Turks seem like neutral and objective arbiters. George Mitchell, by the way - there's a guy who's really been building bridges between the US and Israel this week.

References and related after the jump...