How Turkish media embarrassed Goebbels

About 120 weeks after (then foreign minister) Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu accurately predicted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad?s days in power were numbered and (then prime minister) President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an promised that ?we shall soon have prayers of gratitude in Damascus? (after Mr. al-Assad?s downfall), the Turkish military, in alliance with its Kurdish nemesis, heroically crossed into Syria to move the tomb of a 12th century Turkish sheik ? Suleyman Shah - to a spot by the border. It also destroyed the remaining monument in the only officially Turkish territory outside Turkish soil.

Mighty Turkey had to retreat in the face of threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levent (ISIL), with help from the Kurdistan Workers? Party?s (PKK) next of kin in Syria. That, according to Mr. Davuto?lu, was ?a night of honor.? One newspaper ran the headline, ?The world is talking about the success of Operation Suleyman Shah.? Other headlines said: ?The Turkomans are proud,? ?No permission, we just went there and took it,? ?We hit whoever stood on our way,? ?The epic [tale] of Shah Euphrates.? And many more? All of this must have embarrassed Goebbels, and remind this columnist of the old joke:  

Two middle-aged couples unexpectedly meet after several years of not seeing each other. They once lived as neighbors and their daughters were best friends. When one family left the town, they maintained correspondence at first, but eventually lost touch. Happy about their coincidental meeting, they decide to get together at dinner in which the immediate curiosity was about how each other?s daughters are doing. ?Tell us, how is your daughter? What has she been doing?? asks one father.

The mother tells the story of her daughter: ?Well, our...