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Syria and Turkey: Walking Arm in Arm Down the Same Road?
(Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) David Schenker - Two factors have led to Turkey's shift away from Israel and toward Syria. First, Turkey no longer needed Israeli assistance to pressure the Syrian government to change its policy of providing safe-haven to the terrorist Kurdish Worker's Organization (PKK). Second, in the past seven years, once secular Turkish politics have undergone a profound Islamist transformation. At the same time, the Turkish military can do little to impact the policies of the Islamist AKP, which promote solidarity with Islamist, anti-Western regimes while dismissing secular, pro-Western Muslim governments. The writer is director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.