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When Islamist Foreign Policies Hurt Muslims

(Los Angeles Times) Soner Cagaptay - What is an Islamist foreign policy, exactly? Is it identifying with Muslims and their suffering, or is it identifying with anti-Western regimes even at the cost of Muslims' best interests? Turkey's foreign policy under Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan demonstrates that far from protecting Muslims and their interests, it is promoting a la carte morals - bashing the West and supporting anti-Western regimes, even when the latter hurt Muslims. Since coming to power in 2002, Erdogan's AKP has dramatically changed Turkey's foreign policy. The party has let Ankara's ties with pro-Western Azerbaijan, Georgia and Israel deteriorate and has started to ignore Europe. Meanwhile, the AKP has built ties with anti-Western states such as Sudan while making friends with Ankara's erstwhile adversaries, including Russia, Iran and Syria, and positioning itself as Hamas' patron. This is an ideological view of the world, guided not by religion but by a distorted premise that Islamist and anti-Western regimes are always right even when they are criminal, such as when they are killing Muslims. And in this view, Western states and non-Muslims are always wrong, even when they act in self-defense against Islamist regimes. The writer is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2009-12-08 08:19:16
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