FOREIGN POLICY: HOW THE WEST LOST TURKEY

PanARMENIAN.Net
27.11.2009 18:55 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Lately, some on the right in Washington have fretted
that Turkey’s religiously oriented Justice and Development Party,
the AKP, will distance the country from its Western allies, eroding
secularism as it seeks tighter bonds within the Middle East. After all,
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pushed some very sensitive
Western buttons, Foreign Policy reports.

"These moves leave plenty to worry about – including the possibility
that the United States will make things worse by worrying about all
the wrong things. But Erdogan’s decisions do not augur the rise of
an Islamist foreign policy in Turkey. The more troubling reality
is that they are the inevitable outcome of long-brewing domestic
trends. In limiting cooperation with Israel and improving relations
with neighbors like Iran and Syria, Erdogan is playing to Turkish
leftists and rightists, secularists and Islamists. He’s pandering to
voters who already dislike the United States and Israel while cleverly,
if cynically, pursuing Turkey’s national interests," says the magazine.

According to the author, Turkey will be more useful to its allies if
it is on good terms with its allies’ enemies. "Being a bridge between
East and West, they say, requires having a footing in the East as
well. Yet in trying to turn its dual identity into a strategic asset,
Turkey runs the perpetual risk of finding itself rejected by both
sides," the article further says.

The author of the publication believes that "Erdogan’s challenge is
even harder. He has to get what he can from Turkey’s new friends in
the East while also keeping – and, if necessary, publicly defending –
Turkey’s friends in the West."