But there are good terrorists and bad terrorists

In his speeches to Turkish audiences but addressing world leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an often says that "there should be no good terrorists and bad terrorists" and that "terrorists are terrorists." He's right. But he is not realistic at all if he is seriously expecting the entire world to agree on his own definition of who is a terrorist and who is not. 

Mr. Erdo?an's all-too-powerful but bizarre belief that anyone who does not fiercely agree with him on everything all the time must be an enemy, traitor, terrorist or a combination of all three is not healthy, to put it mildly. 

He does not hide his firm belief that the prominent journalists Can Dündar and Erdem Gül, who ran a story on their newspaper's front page, or the four academics who, along with more than a thousand others, signed a pro-peace (but subjective) petition are terrorists who deserve life sentences. He wants them to stand trial under detention: guilty without trial.  

The president believes that the Kurds who want to carve out a Kurdish region in northern Syria, too, are terrorists. The Kurds who already have their autonomous region in northern Iraq and publicly speak of regional re-mapping (so as to create a homeland for the Kurds) are not terrorists. 

President Erdo?an has every liberty to believe that Hamas, whose charter vows death, is a legitimate political party. And so is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The latter is viewed as a terrorist organization by the Egyptian government and the former by the European Union despite legal challenges Hamas has put forward.

The United States, Canada, Israel and Jordan have outlawed Hamas. Egypt, Japan, Britain and Australia have banned its military wing. Regional rivals Russia, Iran and Turkey,...