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The View from Istanbul

(New York Times) Thomas L. Friedman - The Turks wanted to get into the EU and were rebuffed, but I'm not sure Turkish businessmen even care today. The EU feels dead next to Turkey, which last year was right behind India and China among the fastest-growing economies in the world and was the fastest-growing economy in Europe. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey has become the center of its own economic space, stretching from southern Russia, all through the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and down through Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Middle East. Prime Minister Erdogan sees himself as the leader of a rising economic powerhouse of 70 million people who is entitled to play an independent geopolitical role - hence his UN vote against sanctioning Iran. Yet Erdogan definitely has some troubling Hugo Chavez-Vladimir Putin tendencies. I've never visited a democracy where more people whom I interviewed asked me not to quote them by name for fear of retribution. Moreover, Erdogan has evolved from just railing against Israel's attacks on Hamas in Gaza to spouting conspiracy theories - like the insane notion that Israel is backing the PKK terrorists - as a way of consolidating his political base. Two weeks before the Gaza flotilla incident, a leading poll showed Erdogan's AKP Party trailing his main opposition - the secularist Republican People's Party.
2010-06-21 10:07:25
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