Group items tagged

The Turks, who always used to complain to their Western allies about their rough neighborhood, apparently no longer have any enemies in the east. Turkey's old rival Russia has since become its most important energy and trading partner. Syria and Iraq, two countries with which Ankara has in the past been on the brink of war, are now friends of Turkey, and relations are even improving with Armenia. The Arabs, who never truly took to the successors of the Ottomans, now look with admiration to what they call the "Turkish model," a dynamic, open country that has a better handle on its problems than they do.

When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan assumed office in 2003, he planned to lead Turkey into the European Union. But Europe was unmoved by this vision, and it has also lost much of its appeal within Turkey. According to Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a think tank linked to the center-left Social Democratic Party, as the Europeans have become weary of expansion, Turkey has lost interest in joining the EU. Indeed, what Erdogan meant when he spoke of Turkey's "alternative" to becoming an EU member is becoming increasingly clear.

Critics and supporters alike describe this new course as "neo-Ottomanism." Ankara remains formally committed to its European ambitions. However, frustrated by the open rejection with which it has long been met in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, and which it has been facing once again during the EU election campaign, Turkey is focusing increasingly on its role as a peacekeeping power in a region it either ruled or dominated for centuries.

Turkey's prime minister has described ethnic violence in China's Xinjiang region as "a kind of genocide"."There is no other way of commenting on this event," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

The death toll from the violence there has now risen from 156 to 184, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reports. More than 1,000 people were injured.

"The event taking place in China is a kind of genocide," Mr Erdogan told reporters in Turkey's capital, Ankara. "There are atrocities there, hundreds of people have been killed and 1,000 hurt. We have difficulty understanding how China's leadership can remain a spectator in the face of these events."

By Friday evening, when Turkey repeated its threat to veto any decision to appoint Rasmussen as the next secretary general, it became clear that a NATO summit being held to celebrate its 60th anniversary threatened to end in fiasco.

But Turkey had been the only country that objected to Rasmussen's selection to head the trans-Atlantic military alliance. Detractors of the Dane, led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, felt Rasmussen was unsuitable for the post because he had been unyielding in the dispute over the Muhammad caricatures and preferred to defend the right to free speech rather than apologize.

The remaining 27 NATO members, especially Germany, France and the United States, all offered their clear backing for Rasmussen, but the summit remained a suspenseful one. The reason being that one of the many peculiar rules of the alliance is that the secretary general must be unanimously elected, meaning that Turkey actually did have the power to reject the choice.

US President Barack Obama spent much of his trip to Europe rebuilding bridges. In Prague on Sunday for a US-EU summit, he said "in my view, there is no old Europe or new Europe. There is only a united Europe."

During a speech at the NATO summit in Strasbourg late last week, Obama reached out the olive branch, saying, "in America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world."

And at the G-20 summit in London before that, Obama even took responsibility for the global economic meltdown. "It is true … that the crisis began in the US. I take responsibility, even if I wasn't even president at the time."

En route to Ankara, Mr Obama said he supported the country's efforts to join the European Union. He said Turkey's accession would send an important signal to the Muslim world and firmly anchor it in Europe.

Before travelling to Turkey, Mr Obama participated in a Nato gathering in France, where he helped to overcome Turkey's objection to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the alliance's next leader.

Turkey had misgivings about Mr Rasmussen over his refusal to apologise for the "cartoons controversy", in which a Danish newspaper published illustrations that inflamed passions in much of the Muslim world. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late Sunday that Mr Obama's support had helped to resolve concerns. "He put forth a lot of positive energy," Mr Erdogan said. "We responded positively to this. We hope that the promises made are kept."

The Justice and Development Party scored an impressive re-election in 2007 after pursuing market-oriented policies that brought economic growth and more trade ties with the European Union. That conservative Muslim party also expanded human rights and brought Turkish law closer to European standards.

Those reforms have since stalled — partly because of opposition from civilian nationalists and generals who still wield too much clout. (The trial of 86 people accused of plotting a military coup is a reminder of the dark side of Turkish politics.)

But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also seems to have lost enthusiasm for the European Union bid and the reforms that are the price of admission.

The last eight years have been brutal on the U.S.-Turkey relationship. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 exposed a deep rift between the two countries, with Ankara opposing the war and Turkey's parliament refusing to pass a motion that would have allowed U.S. troops to use the country as a launching pad for attacking the Saddam regime. Things have been even more dismal on the public opinion front. In a 2007 Pew Research Center public opinion survey, only 9 percent of Turks surveyed held favorable views of the United States, meaning that Turkey was the country with the least favorable view of the United States among the 47 countries and territories surveyed. (If it's any consolation for the United States, other surveys found that Turks seem to be a grumpy lot, holding generally unfavorable views of many other countries.)

America's fall from grace was reflected in Turkish popular culture. A 2005 Turkish bestseller, Metal Firtina (Metal Storm), envisioned Turks and Americans engaging in all-out war, the story ending with a nuclear device detonating in Washington. Kurtlar Vadisi -- Irak (Valley of the Wolves -- Iraq), a crassly anti-American and anti-Semitic 2006 film that became one of Turkey's best-grossing movies ever, saw a team of Turkish agents battling evil Americans in northern Iraq and a devious doctor (played by Gary Busey) who runs an organ-harvesting operation that relies on Iraqi corpses.

Yet Turkish public opinion might now be turning a corner. Obama's election and visit seemed to bring out a healthy dose of goodwill and excitement in Turkey.

Barack Obama today won agreement for substantial Nato troop reinforcements in Afghanistan, when nine European nations, including Britain, said they would send up to 5,000 troops and logistical help ahead of the presidential elections there in August. Britain is to send 900 extra troops almost immediately, who will remain until October.

News of the reinforcements came as Nato named the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as its next leader after overcoming Turkish opposition.

David Miliband the foreign secretary said the surprisingly large number of troops offered was proof of a palpable "Obama effect."

It was only Barack Obama's telephone diplomacy -- which came in the form of a call to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- that solved the problem. In the end, the two agreed that Turkey would not blackball Fogh Rasmussen in return for reportedly gaining an important seat in the alliance and a pledge to start procedures to shut down the Danish television station Roj TV, which Turkey accuses of having ties to the Kurdish militant group PKK.

Turkey is a very important strategic partner for the US, a fact which already led presidents Clinton and Bush to give vocal support to Ankara's ambitions to join the EU.

Another fact is that Turkey's army -- which alone has 1,200 soldiers stationed in Afghanistan -- is the second largest among those of NATO's member states.