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Turkey: America's New Rival in the Middle East

(Foreign Policy) Steven A. Cook - For the first time in its history, Ankara has chosen sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, demanding that Israel take steps to ease the blockade of Gaza or risk unspecified "consequences." Well before the recent crisis, the Turks had positioned themselves as thinly veiled advocates for Hamas, which has long been on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations. In public statements, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has compared Turkey's Islamists and Hamas. Implicit in these declarations is a parallel to Erdogan's own Justice and Development Party, whose predecessors were repeatedly banned from politics. The stark reality is that while Turkey and the U.S. are not enemies in the Middle East, they are fast becoming competitors. The Turks are willing to bend the regional rules of the game to serve Ankara's own interests. If the resulting policies serve U.S. goals at the same time, good. If not, so be it. The writer is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
2010-06-03 09:43:30
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