In Esquire Magazine (Feb): "Turkey: Also the Man" (No. 42 of the "79 Things We Can All Agree On.") LINK FIXED
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:01AM This is my 22nd piece in the magazine since 2003.
It appears in the February issue as one of the "79 things we can all agree on."
The beginning . . .
Turkey: Also the man.
The world is of many minds about Turkey — almost as many as Turkey is about the world. We in the West worry that Ankara has turned away, when in truth it was Europe that turned Turkey out years ago, signaling, in no uncertain terms, that the "Christian club" wasn't interested in having all those Muslims inside the union.
Now, it does seem clear that Ankara has decided that enough is enough. In this geopolitical rom-com, our plucky heroine has come to the conclusion that after transforming herself into her suitor's acceptable mate, she can do better on her own. Under prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan, Turkey is aiming higher: genuine leadership across the greater Middle East . . .
Read the entire list starting here. See the entire Turkey entry here (link fixed, I hope).
Reader Comments (3)
I figure I agree with about 2/3 of those things. But I'm with you on Turkey. The core question for Turkey is how far it can go it alone, and then who will it want to align with after that?
The question is: Has the crisis-riden EU the capacity to absorb a new member at the size of Turkey? It´s not just a question of bad will. Another interesting question will be if NATOmembers Turkey and Greece will get in conflict in the mid- or longterm.We already have regular tensions between both sides around the Aegis. The new strategic triangle (Israel-Greece-South Cyprus) could get into conflict with Turkey.Israel is building a military base in South Cyprus and Greece, Israel and South Cyprus want to exploit the new discovered gas fields on sea and to build a LNG network while Russia and Turkey are sending more navy vessel in this region. UIf Turkey and Greece get into a conflict, how would NATO react?
Don't know if it my system (firefox) or not but the link to the full Turkey entry isn't working. Error message "Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because the protocol (turkey) isn't associated with any program."