Etiket foreign

Niyazi Dalyancı Is the recent surge in Kurdish separatist terror the result of Turkey’s mismanagement in foreign policy? Turkey is debating this question as the number of dead among government forces reached 30 since the beginning of May. The initiatives taken by the government to make Turkey a regional power under the guidance of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu are seen by many commentators as the main reason behind the country’s increasing isolation from its allies in the West. In May, Turkey’s vote in the United Nations Security Council along with Brazil against the new round of sanctions to dissuade Iran from continuing its uranium enrichment project brought Ankara’s relations with Washington to an all-time low. In the words of Hurriyet columnist Eyup Can, the relations with the U.S. are worse than the period when the Turkish parliament rejected the stationing of American troops on Turkish soil prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Can who is not among the avowed critics of the government, claims that Ankara has pinned its hopes for improving relations with Washington to the demise of “the government of fanatics in Israel.” A war of words has been continuing between Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israel since the eventful televised panel in Davos in January 2009 when Erdogan had a row with the Israeli President Shimon Peres scolding him “You know how to kill people!” Then came the Israeli raid on the Turkish ship “Mavi Marmara” carrying humanitarian relief material to Gaza, resulting with the death of six of its passengers, all Turkish citizens. The incident exacerbated the confrontation between Turkey and Israel that resulted in the withdrawal of Israeli personnel training the Turkish military in operating unmanned Heron spy planes bought from Israel to be used against the Kurdish insurgency. Erdogan’s repeated […]