Erdoğan's problems mounting every day

In a speech over the weekend, President Tayyip Erdoğan complained that the ongoing Qatar crisis came out of the blue, at a time when Turkey was trying to deal with other serious regional issues like Syria and Iraq.

He has a point. The Qatar crisis has put the Turkish government in a position where it is confronting a number of Muslim-majority countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, in defense of Qatar. In order to avoid further antagonizing relations with the House of Saud, Erdoğan has tried to make a number of maneuvers, including sending Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu to Riyadh, in the hope that Turkey's mediation efforts would be welcomed.

This seems to have not yet worked. After the intervention of U.S. President Donald Trump, both Saudi Arabia and Qatar are looking to the White House for a way out of the crisis. Qatar's $12 billion arms deal with the U.S. could be read as a sign that Emir Thamim al-Thani can keep his place. That is good for Erdoğan, as there is a personal bond between the two leaders, which has helped a lot of the money to flow from the Gulf state to Turkey for investments. But the price that al-Thani pays for keeping his chair may include halting support to the Muslim Brotherhood and factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA), which Qatar has backed strongly up to now.

In Syria the advance of the U.S.-backed forces on Raqqa - with the help of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) affiliate, the Syrian Kurdish People's Democratic Units (YPG), despite Erdoğan's objections - seems to be squeezing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) day by day. But recent news coming from al-Bab and Idlib, held by the FSA with the backing of the Turkish Armed Forces, is not good after the Qatar crisis. 

The advance...