The Turkey Analyst

Vol. 3 no. 11, 7 June 2010

ANALYSIS

Turkish Hubris: Has the AKP Government Overreached in its Foreign Policy?
Svante E. Cornell
Ostentatiously seeking zero-problems with neighbors, Turkey has ended up taking on an erstwhile strategic partner in the region. Its growing economic clout does indeed legitimate Turkey’s aspiration to have a decisive say in Middle Eastern matters. Ultimately, Turkey’s new, assertive – indeed aggressive – foreign policy is predicated on the notion that the West is on the decline. Yet as it rather carelessly wields its newfound power, the Turkish government seems curiously oblivious to the risks of overreaching. 

Kılıçdaroğlu Jettisons the Jargon of Secularism but Surrenders to Nationalism
Halil M. Karaveli
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the new leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), is reaching out to religious conservatism. Yet while he is jettisoning the jargon of secularism, he does not deviate from his party’s traditional nationalism. Thus he is able to offer little new hope of transcending Turkey’s existential Turkish-Kurdish divide.

What the Columnists Say
The near-simultaneous Israeli boarding of the Turkish, Gaza bound ferry Mavi Marmara and the PKK attack against the Turkish naval base in the Mediterranean port of İskenderun have led several Turkish commentators – and politicians – to raise the specter of a possible Israeli attempt to destabilize Turkey.  Although far from everyone is convinced that Israel was actually behind the PKK attack, there is concern that the current Turkish-Israeli confrontation could indeed at some future point induce Israel to consider targeting Turkey’s Achilles’ heel, the Kurdish problem.  Meanwhile, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the new leader of the opposition Republican People’s party (CHP), caught attention when he condemned military interventions in politics. However, that principled stance has not been sufficient to endear the new CHP leader to the commentators in the pro-AKP media who generally write him off as a representative of the old state establishment. 

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NEW Silk Road Paper published

Between Fact and Fantasy: Turkey's Ergenekon Investigation, by Gareth H. Jenkins, August 2009.


The Turkey Analyst
The Turkey Analyst is a publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Joint Center, designed to bring authoritative analysis and news on the rapidly developing domestic and foreign policy issues in Turkey. It is published weekly, and includes a topical analysis, as well as translations and summaries of selected Turkish news reports. It is edited and compiled under the supervision of Svante E. Cornell, Halil M. Karaveli, and M. K. Kaya.

The Turkey Analyst wlecomes article submissions.

The Joint Center
The Joint Center, created in 2005, is the product of the merger of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, and the Silk Road Studies Program, at the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy.

The Turkey Initiative
The Joint Center launched a Turkey Initiative in 2006 in order to improve understand of Turkish domestic and foreign affairs in Europe and the United States.

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