Of course, that doesn't mean that I like Morsi or most of his Islamist counterparts that came to prominence in the Arab Spring - only the ones from Nahda in Tunisia have played what could fairly be called a positive role with positive consequences. It does mean that I find it difficult to be cold and purely realpolitiker about it and support regimes as dubious as the Saudi one (though I do respect King Abdallah more than his country as a whole). And as hypocritical as Al-Jazeera and their Qatari masters may be about preaching the democracy and free speech abroad which they repress at home, they're still much less repellent than the propaganda machines that pass for media in most other Arab countries, so when it's Qatar against the rest of the GCC, I tend to think Qatar is right more often than not. Similarly, while I detest Khamenei and his ilk, I think we can all agree that Iran has a thousand times the culture and history of Saudi Arabia, and the Iranian people (not government, though I like Rouhani and what I've seen of his cabinet) is arguably more friendly towards the West and its ideals than the Saudi one.

Indeed. We certainly agree on that much - that Hamas being politically weakened and isolated was a good thing and an important opportunity. It's after that that our disagreements started.

The Turkish presidential election is only two weeks away now. Best case scenario is Erdogan gets elected but Gül or someone else in the AKP manages to keep him locked in the president's traditional role - if his active, guiding role in Turkish politics ends right now, he still has a fair claim of having been the single greatest Turkish leader since Atatürk. Seems unlikely somehow, though.

I think the real problem of the West in Turkey, though, not in the least where foreign policy is concerned, is that the alternative to the AKP remains so utterly lacklustre. Actually, the same goes for much of the Middle East: the Islamists may not like the West, but the secular nationalists (or the Christians) aren't much warmer, or at least their supporters in the streets aren't.

Yeah. Understandable, though - with what's going on in Syria, Hamas maintaining its links to them openly would be too fatal for its popular support in Palestine - and outside it.