That was some dispatch in respect of Turkey that was issued by Conrad Black. “If Ankara goes cock-a-hoop for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood,” he writes in a piece that first appeared in the National Post, “we should close up support for Egypt and other states on the firing line with the Turks’ new proteges, and Turkey should be expelled from NATO and its citizens barred from migrating into the European Union.” This makes Conrad Black, in so far as our reading has taken us, the first person to articulate forcefully the question that is no doubt starting, if only starting, to percolate in the foreign chancelleries in the wake of the decision of Turkey to send the so-called “peace flotilla” against Israel. The question is whether it really makes sense, given the drift of things, to continue to welcome Turkey in the North Atlantic Treaty.

No doubt such a suggestion would horrify the State Department in Washington. The Obama administration is now working, at the United Nations and elsewhere, to bring down the level of international emotion over the peace flotilla. If things go the way the administration wants, the affair of these peace ships — the Rachel Corrie was boarded without violence and brought into Ashdod — will come to be seen as a relatively minor chapter in the great drama. It is certainly hard to argue with Israel’s logic, which is that it is not seeking to block humanitarian aid but rather to inspect for weapons and other contraband that any nation would assert the right to indict in a situation like that which obtains in Gaza.

What a contrast there is between the way Israel has handled these ships and the way, say, the Turks handled the Struma. It had been bound for pre-state Israel from Romania, where it had been commissioned by followers of the Zionist visionary Vladimir Jabotinsky, and was carrying 779 Jewish refugees. In December of 1941, it limped into the port of Istanbul, where it remained, passengers aboard, while the British refused to allow it to continue its voyage to Palestine. Eventually, the Turks towed the crippled vessel — carrying 103 children, 269 women, and 406 men, according to the Web site www.struma.org — out into the Black Sea, and set it adrift. In the morning, it was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine and went straight to the bottom. All but one of its passengers perished.

So let us not credit the attempts at a high-minded tone from Ankara. What we hear from the United Nations is that the Turks, no doubt at the insistence of President Erdogan, are resisting American efforts bring down the intensity of this confrontation. “Turkey,” Youssef Ibrahim wired us, “now joins the ranks of two militias, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, along with Syria to form the brunt of the anti-Israeli cabal in the region.” He uses the word “sinister” to characterize Turkey’s role, given its membership in the North Atlantic Treaty. There is little doubt in our mind that if these kinds of “flotillas” continue to be permitted to embark from Turkey, the North Atlantic Treaty will come under just the kind of scrutiny about which Conrad Black writes.