Posted on 03/27/2010 8:53:25 PM PDT by Ooh-Ah
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President Abdullah Gul, ... recently received a visiting group of Americans, including a handful of reporters, of which I was one.
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Despite the hospitality, I came away with the uneasy sense that there is trouble brewing in Ankara. A secular, Muslim-majority state, long allied with the West, Turkey in 2002 voted into power an Islamic party, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP. The AKP's leaders have been fashioning a new role for their government--a role embraced by President Barack Obama--in which Turkey behaves less as a firm ally of the West than as a multilateral mediator and regional center of "soft power."
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From one government official after another we heard that Turkey's current foreign policy, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is to seek "zero problems" with its neighbors. But Turkey has some of the world's roughest neighbors, including Iran. Aspiring to zero problems with Iran, while its rulers murder dissidents, threaten democracies and build the bomb, requires compromises that are inevitably at odds with an array of Western interests, including the democratic values that Turkey's AKP trumpets as being part of its program.
Already Turkey has tilted away from Israel, with which it had solid ties in the 1990s. Today Turkey's AKP leaders talk with everyone but sympathize with the Iranian-backed Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas, as "brothers." ...Tan is a genial man, but his presence was a pointed reminder that while Turkey is America's ally--a NATO member, sending troops to Afghanistan and hosting U.S. forces at Incirlik Air Base--Turkey's leaders don't mind flaunting their disagreements with Washington.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Obama will treat them better if they become bitter Islamists threatening the world.
The last administrators of a Caliphate are the Turks, and they, like all Muslims, forget nothing eternally. The US is currently backing the Turkish Muslim govt...to what end? The Generals have been and are, pro Western and secular.
Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are the big contestants for the next Caliphate...if the US is not successful in Iraq and Afganistan (pulling out guarantees sure-to-be Islamic tribal rescividism) a new Caliphate is assured afer they all fight it out. Do not look for a Caliphate soon. When the US pulls out of both Iraq and Afganistan, even more self-defining problems will arise than exist now, and such an outcome may not be prevented.
If we do not pull out, we must be in Iraq and Afganistan for decades, and that does not seem possible when we are a financially insolvent country. A pull-out seems necessary and financially pre-ordained.
Turkey, RELGIONS:
Muslim 99.8% (mostly Sunni), other 0.2% (mostly Christians and Jews)
A Look at Iran
http://www.truthusa.com/IRAN.html
This is bigger than when the Bourbons and Hapsburgs formed an alliance setting off the 7 years war. The Turks and Persians hate each other; Ottoman Turks and Persians were constantly fighting through the history of the Ottoman empire.
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