Foreign Policy: How the West lost Turkey

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."