Turkey vs. Tillerson

So U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is finding out, this diplomacy thing is harder than it looks.

And Turkey, which is behaving more badly than usual in the run-up to an April 16 referendum, came prepared for its first meeting with the secretary with a laundry list of complaints and slights — before showing the secretary the door.

The upcoming referendum — not mentioned by the secretary — would vastly expand the powers of the increasingly autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And it has begun to color just about everything Ankara does in recent days. Surely Tillerson would have realized that.

“Let me be very frank: These are not easy decisions,” Tillerson said after meeting Erdogan and other top Turkish officials in Ankara about such touchy issues as the fight against the Islamic State, the future of Syria and American support for the Kurds fighting in Syria.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, standing next to Tillerson, said he expected the U.S. to cut off aid to Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State. Then he reinforced his nation’s demand that the U.S. extradite a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania, whom it blames for the failed July coup attempt.

“We are expecting better cooperation,” Cavusoglu insisted.

And not content with all that, he called a federal investigation (launched by the now-fired U.S. Attorney for New York Preet Bharara) into the U.S. dealings of a Turkish businessman with ties to Erdogan “political.”

The only good news is that Tillerson appeared to hold his ground — saying U.S. support for Kurdish forces would continue and reiterating that there are no plans to extradite the cleric, Fethullah Gulen.

Guess it would have been too much to hope that Tillerson would have come with a list of his own — like voicing concern for all those journalists and judges now in Turkish prisons or living in exile. Or the steady erosion of the rule of law within a oncethriving democratic nation.

Maybe next time?