More on "assertive Turkey" being a good thing

map here

David Gardner in the FT (column "Global Insight").

The EU ambivalently delays any serious negotiations on Turkey's admission, and meanwhile, the Turk's, with their "zero problems with neighbors" foreign policy, seem to be outshining everyone in the region in terms of diplomatic zing.  So Gardner asks, does Turkey care about the EU any more?

Is Turkey playing "hard to get" with this "neo-Ottomanism" under foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu and prime minister Erdogan?

A local academic says, "AKP people feel more comfortable in Damascus than Rome.  The new elites want the best of both worlds."

Good for them, I say, and good for the Core as a whole for Turkey to come into its own as a frontier integrator and globalization networker.  Even if it means we don't always get out way on things.

Gardner's point is apt here:  no longer the Western bulwark against the hordes, now Turkey is the prime bridge, whether the EU rewards it or not.  Turkey has opening 30 new embassies in Africa and Latin America. Bravo!  I say.

Gardner:

This is not the return of the Ottomans but a commercial comeback--timed to pickup the slack from the recession in the EU.

Turkey ses itself as a regional power as well, and is determined to show the EU two things: that it has options; and that, unlike the EU, it knows how to deploy "soft power" in Europe's Middle Eastern backyard.  In short, that is is an asset.  "Turkey is using the transformative power of the European Union, which the EU itself appears to have lost," says Ayhan Kaya of Istanbul's Bilgi University.

Germany and France have told too-big, too-Muslim and too-poor Turkey to f--k off.  And Turkey took that advice to heart.

We are all better off for that ambition unleashed.