A Godzilla with less foreign policy knowledge?

Good news for its fans: The International Strongmen Club is growing in size! 

It will be fun to watch how Turkey's and America's populist leaders will get along. In theory it may not be a smooth, working alliance - as it will bring together a man who once suggested banning Muslims from entering his country and the other who once claimed that the continent giving the other's country its name had been discovered by Muslims more than 300 years before Columbus.  

Donald Trump may be the American Tayyip Erdoğan; and Mr. Erdoğan may be the Turkish Mr. Trump. No doubt, there are similarities between the two leaders, including the like-mindedness of their voters. No doubt, they are both the weak man's vision of a strong man. They are never wrong no matter what they say or do. They are smart men who understand what less smart people wish to hear. They both like to sue people. They are both passionately loved and passionately disliked by people from different parts of their nations, and the world. 

But if they ever have a strong bond, that bond will be their shared pragmatism. All the same, how would Mr. Erdoğan, in one of the world's most turbulent regions, align policy with a man who looks like an unstoppable Godzilla with not much knowledge on foreign policy and experience?  

In January, a fuming Mr. Erdoğan called for Mr. Trump's name to be removed from a shopping mall in a financial district in Istanbul. After Mr. Trump's election victory, the pragmatic Mr. Erdoğan congratulated him and spoke of the start of "a new era" between Turkey and the United States. Mr. Erdoğan may now even encourage the construction of more shopping malls named after Trump.  

In April, Mr. Erdoğan complained that "unfortunately we are living in a...