In Moscow, Erdogan kneels to Putin

Even by Vladimir Putin’s standards for embarrassing his foreign counterparts, his treatment of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday was a spectacle — and not a good one for the Turkish president.

Meeting Putin in the aftermath of a recent Syrian airstrike, which killed 34 Turkish soldiers, Erdogan might have been expected to take a tough stance with the Russian leader. Or at least a harder line than his submissiveness of past.