Turkey hit for reconciling with Russia and Israel

The ISIS suicide attack on Istanbul's international airport seems to be a quick reprisal against Turkey for its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan's apology to Vladimir Putin for last fall's downing of a Russian warplane on the Syrian border - on top of its renormalization of ties with Israel.

Of course, this isn't the first time ISIS has hit Turkey: last October an ISIS suicide bombing killed about 100 demonstrators for peace in Syria as they marched in Ankara on the eve of Mr. Erdogan's reelection; but the high-profile nature of the strike on Ataturk International Airport bears an unmistakable scent of jihadist retaliation for his perceived treason against Islam.

If so, however, it could mark a significant new turning of the tide against ISIS: should Moscow and Ankara now begin to align their strategies regarding the rogue state, it would remove one of the biggest obstacles to international cooperation in the Mideast that allowed it to grow into a major territorial entity in Syria during 2013-14 in the first place (from whence it spread to Iraq).

While horrific and unlikely to be the last such attack by ISIS on Turkish civilians, the Istanbul bombing gives Turkey and Russia a golden opportunity to start over with respect to Syria: the Kremlin now has every reason to return Mr. Erdogan's overture and strengthen his hand against Islamist hardliners who may sympathize with the anti-Russian message ISIS is trying to convey (even if they must publicly condemn the act itself).

Should he prove sincere in seeking reconciliation and willing to risk both fundamentalist ire and actual terrorist attack at home, Mr. Erdogan's twin rapprochements with Putin and Netanyahu could go down as one of the greatest strokes of statecraft by any Islamic leader in modern times. Crucially, it would indicate that he now sees more or less eye to eye with his counterpart in the Kremlin, after a string of setbacks exposed the sheer fragility and isolation of his more inflexible position in the first 7-8 months after Russia began its military intervention on behalf of Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus last September 30.

That is to say, Turkey's priority is now to salvage what it can from its Syrian misadventure, namely some degree of influence in ending the conflict and securing its southern border's heavily Kurdish sectors from spillover instability on account of renegade Syrian Kurdish groups colluding with its own separatist Kurds, Given its leverage with the militant and jihadist groups still fighting Assad in Syria's northwest, especially Aleppo province, Ankara can fairly easily secure these vital objectives - and it can't do anything that's at odds with pro-Kurdish Washington, anyway.

Now that Turkey's rebuilding its bridges to Moscow and Jerusalem, as well, it's repositioning itself as a pillar of regional stability - perhaps to such an extent that it'll even become apparent that that stability broke down so badly in the first place largely because it turned insular and sectarian.