Monday, July 28, 2014

Turkey at the crossroads

Turkey has always been at the crossroads, geographically speaking.

Turkey is where Asia meets Europe.

Turkey was also one of the very first colonies to throw off the yoke of colonialism, under Ataturk.

Today Turkey finds itself the only Muslim country in NATO.

It has become, pursuant to the above, the only NATO country that has objected to Israel's latest war crimes in Gaza.

At the same time, Turkey has worked harder to foster relations with Israel than any independent state in the Muslim world.

While that was going on, Turkey found herself one of the few surviving outposts of Muslim Brotherhood influence.

Turkey is at the crossroads of many competing forces.

Turkey scored an unfortunate own goal with its connivance in the Syrian civil war, offering itself up to its NATO betters as a staging ground for "rebels" of all stripes, even after it became obvious that those stripes were dominated by fundamentalists who were never going to be reliable NATO allies.

So where is Turkey today? The US keeps the Gulen card up its sleeve for a rainy day. Erdogan is recognized as a liability one day and an asset the next.

Turkey is at the crossroads, again.

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