CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — "Who lost Turkey?" That question, often raised in the past, has been heating up in the aftermath of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's emotional outburst during the recent World Economic Forum 2009 in Davos, when he abruptly left a panel he was sharing with Israeli President Shimon Peres.
And the Turkish question matters greatly, because it touches on some of the most unstable and unsettling of the world's diplomatic disputes.
If Turkey has indeed been "lost," those responsible include the European Union, the United States, Israel and Turkey itself. The EU's growing reservations about Turkey's membership have been expressed unambiguously by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. In the U.S., former President George W. Bush gets some of the blame because of the war in Iraq. Israel, too, has played its part in Turkey's alienation from the West, as a result of the Lebanon war of 2006 and its recent military operations in Gaza.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.