Not so long ago, the new dynamism in Turkish foreign policy engrossed the world. It seemed as though Prime Minister Erdogan and Foreign Minister Davutoglu could achieve anything they wanted. Relations with Syria, Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Greece and even Iraqi Kurdistan improved markedly, while only the relationship with Israel fell by the wayside. Casting themselves as the Palestinians’ new champions, the dynamic duo of Erdogan and Davutoglu won admiring fans across the Muslim world. After the last Turkish election, in which his party won over half the total vote, Mr. Erdogan’s aspirations and sense of grandeur seemed to know no limits: “Believe me,” he said in his election speech, “Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul, Beirut won as much as Izmir, Damascus won as much as Ankara, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakir.” Mr. Erdogan’s “Kurdish initiative,” meanwhile, promised to finally end Kurdish alienation within Turkey and put its internal war to rest.

How could such a promising start collapse so completely? Turkish relations with every neighbour except Iraqi Kurdistan seem to have soured dangerously, to the point that the Turkish Foreign Ministry must issue increasingly alarmed warnings to Turkish nationalist traveling to any number of countries in the region. New “friends” like Syria’s Assad and Lebanon’s Hezballah, both of whom Turkey forsook Israel in order to embrace, now shoot down Turkish warplanes and kidnap Turkish nationals. Meanwhile, Mr. Erdogan’s “Kurdish initiative” seems dead in the water and Turkey’s southeast heats up with ever increasing bombings, attacks and unrest. Are Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Davutoglu some kind of modern day Icarus and Daedalus, flying too close to the sun?

Rational foreign policy making tries to match ends to means. In other words, one actively pursues only the objectives one has the power to secure. If Turkey had only focused on its internal problems and sought to end the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgency, for instance, they might have enjoyed greater success. Instead, regimes in the region that grow increasingly resentful of Turkish foreign policy (especially Syria and Iran, but perhaps others as well) try to “even the score” with Ankara by renewing their support for the PKK. The growing tempo of the PKK insurgency in turn saps Turkish strength and decreases Ankara’s ability to project power outside its borders. As the fight with the PKK grows in intensity and the tension with Assad’s government in Damascus rises, Turkey can not even turn to past sources of high tech military hardware and strategic assistance, relations with Israel having been buried along with the old Turkish policies of nonintervention and foreign policy prudence. With the United States and Western Europe increasingly broke and isolated as well, succor for Ankara may prove hard to find should things get worse.

If Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Davutoglu had decided to maintain good relations with Assad’s Syria and Iran at all costs, rather than becoming the champions of Sunni Muslims across the region, they might likewise have enjoyed more overall success. In that scenario, torpedoing relations with Israel might have turned out worth the price.

Even the old cautious Turkish foreign policy would probably have yielded better results. Under a pre-AKP government, one would have expected Turkey to say lots of supportive things for the Palestinians, the Syrian protestors and Arab Spring demonstrators everywhere, while nonetheless continuing to do business with everyone – Iran, Assad, Israel, Hamas, the United States, Nuri al-Maliki – anyone and everyone.

Men who fancy themselves truly great have no patience for these kinds of “ho-hum” neutral policies, however. Instead, they bite off huge mouthfuls of their vaunted goals, scarcely realizing that they can not chew it all – especially through their own grandiose rhetoric. Before they even realize what happened, they all too often squander their state’s power. They then begin to look around for conspiracies to explain their bitter disappointment and failings.