[a_Turk]

The writer lists the "Armenian issue" as the least important of his "possible mines," but dedicates 10 paragraphs to it.

Thanks for posting this article. I think the grown-ups in Israel and Turkey know what's at stake. And the young "Islamist" birds in government have learned the art of flying in a hurry it would seem..

[Mortimer Snavely]

"In and of itself, Islamist influence may not suffice to arrest or reverse the progress of Turkish-Israeli relations. But Ankara is also under pressure to align its foreign policy with that of Europe and decouple it from the United States."

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'Most of the "Nay" votes (to US deployment from Eastern Anatolia) were from the opposition party, and totally non-Islamist.'

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The sheer complexity of regional politics in the region would give even the most thoughtful historians and analysts a headache.

As Daniel Pipes observes about the ramifications of the Turkish-Israeli relationship:

"In the Caucasus, to take one example, Azerbaijan and Georgia line up with Turkey, Armenia with Iran. In the Balkans, Macedonia, Bosnia, Slovenia, and Croatia tend toward Turkey's side, Serbia toward Greece and therefore Syria-Iran. And then there is Central Asia, where Kazakstan, Kirgizia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan side with Turkey, Tajikistan with Iran, while Russia, as we have seen, backs Syria-Iran. But within Russia, Chechnya sides more with Turkey-Israel, though Teheran is still hoping to win it over. In the crazy-quilt pattern of these matters, a leading Chechen figure, Khoj-Ahmed Noukhaev, has asserted that his sympathies are "with the small Jewish nation" against the Arabs; and Chechnya's defense minister happens to be a Jordanian national and former military officer."

Although I am hardly a towering scholar of Middle Eastern politics, I do recognize overly simplistic analysis when I see it. There's a whole lot more going on here than Burris has acknowledged.