When fighters from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party killed 24 Turkish soldiers in the eastern province of Hakkari, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, immediately ordered 10,000 soldiers to cross into Iraq and find the militants, an article in the New York Times says.

Besides provoking one of the largest ground operations against the Kurdish fighters in recent years, the resurgence of the group, known as the PKK, shows the difficulties Ankara now faces in adjusting a foreign policy that was based on its ambitious “zero problems” strategy in the region, it says.

“The zero problem policy was over-optimistic, almost naïve in the belief that difficult problems could be solved easily,” the author quotes Sinan Ullgen, chairman of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, an independent research group in Istanbul.

The zero problems policy was designed by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in order to build strong economic, political and social ties with Turkey’s immediate neighbors. In practice, that policy meant shifting away from Turkey’s traditional reliance on the United States and its close military ties with Israel to a regionally based strategy aimed at Turkey becoming the main player in the neighborhood, the article reads.

As for Turkey’s attempts at normalizing relations with its neighbor Armenia, with whom diplomatic ties were severed in 1992, the zero problems policy has not lived up to expectations, either, the article reminds.

The thaw ended soon. Azerbaijan, which traditionally has had very close ties with Turkey, was from the outset suspicious about any breakthrough. The Azeri authorities feared they would lose leverage over Armenia if restoring diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey was not linked to the resolution of the conflict in Nagorno Karabakh. As a result of Azerbaijan’s conditions, the talks have stalled. Instead of trying to maintain the momentum even at the risk of poorer ties with Azerbaijan, Mr. Erdogan backed away, it says.