Turkey's Triumphs

After a historic cease-fire by Kurdish rebels and a U.S.-brokered Israeli apology, Turkey reasserts itself as a regional power player

Hawre Muhamed

Kurds in the PKK stronghold of Qandil in northern Iraq celebrate the festival of Nowruz and the announcement of the cease-fire. The flags represent the PKK, Iraqi Kurdistan and a PKK–affiliated political party.

In the middle east, where nations often compete furiously to claim the mantle of the injured party, sorry truly is the hardest word. So Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's U.S.-brokered March 22 apology to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was as unusual as it was revealing about the reordered priorities of America's two most valued allies in the region--and about the Obama Administration's need for its friends to get along at a time of deepening instability in the region. As arranged in advance, Netanyahu read out an official apology over the phone for the nine lives lost on the Turkish...

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