Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan loves two things: working and getting angry. He is very good at both. He gets mad at Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on one occasion, on another occasion he gets angry with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at other times it is German Chancellor Angela Merkel or French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Even Israeli President Shimon Peres was on the receiving end of an angry exchange in Davos in 2009. But there is one world leader at whom he never gets angry U.S President Barack Obama. Erdogan and Obama have a shared dream a world with no conflicts. For the Turks, this is a declared vision Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotuglo's longtime "zero problems" foreign policy. For Obama it is more an ongoing desire to play make believe. Over the weekend, Obama and Erdogan were reminded of the real world, and that even they can be wrong sometimes. If their plan had panned out, we would have been running through rose fields by now. Instead, we are left with thorns. Let's start with Iran. In 2011, a second round of nuclear talks in Turkey followed the first round, in Geneva in 2009. The nuclear talks, which started six years ago, always broke down for the same reason. Iran is an expert at making promises while playing for time. Last year, the Iranians spent an entire Friday at the mosque while the other delegations patiently waited for them. If this were a ball game, the referee would have called foul a long time ago. Warnings have been dealt, six times since 2006 to be exact (six rounds of sanctions). Iran may have simply come to the conclusion that the referee doesn't have the ability to blow the whistle. Erdogan's Turkey is asking the world to exercise patience, while the Obama administration truly believes in the combined potential of negotiations and sanctions. Not a single one of my colleagues in Istanbul believed on Saturday that Iran's intentions are good, but a regional war scares the world more than Iranian bombs after all, the bombs are aimed only at Israel. Tehran is playing the same card and going all the way. Perhaps that is why everyone is lowering expectations and reserving seats for the next round of talks in Baghdad next month. They can eat tastier fish there, and on the way they can delay the countdown to another war. The Far East has its own version of Iran -- North Korea. The world, led by the U.S., wanted to believe the idea that sanctions and negotiations could work there too. Several countries also six, like the Iran talks convened to resolve the North Korea crisis. This weekend we saw how the faces of the Pyongyang dynasty the only Stalinist dynasty in history may change, but its policies never will. North Korea demonstrated its arrogance on Friday by launching a ballistic missile despite having vowed not to, and despite being threatened not to. The launch may have failed, but North Korea may try to restore its lost pride with a third nuclear test. They have the capability, and the world since it is now too late lacks the ability to respond. Overall, this weekend was a very eventful one. In Cairo, as expected, Tahrir Square has now become an arena for a clash of two Titans: the Egyptian army and the Islamists. The battle over the presidency, against the candidacy of Mubarak-era intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, has hit the streets, which are dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. The brotherhood did not only steal the revolution from the Egyptian democratic youth, but now they have also stolen Tahrir Square. In Syria, the U.N. wanted to present an achievement a cease-fire agreement but for some reason, the cease-fire is still claiming casualties. The African Union also has no idea where to begin solving its crises: North and South Sudan have resumed violence; in Mali, the joyous and magical Saharan city, Timbuktu, has fallen into rebel hands; and in Guinea-Bissau, the army executed a coup just before elections. On the other hand, maybe Obama and Erdogan are right. Perhaps we will achieve world peace someday. It may even be that when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, so will the world's problems, including Timbuktu's. Because, you may have noticed, there are serious conflicts everywhere in the world, but only Israel's Ben-Gurion airport is the site of an international humanitarian fly-in after this eventful weekend.
