Confident Turkey Looks East, Not West

And continuing to fulfill Biblical prophesy:

Disillusion with the EU has deepened since Brussels part-suspended talks in December after a row over Cyprus. The hostility, as seen from Ankara, of French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has poisoned the pot further.

But anger and frustration is slowly giving way to a new, more assertive idea: that perhaps Turkey does not really need Europe after all … - … and the EU will come to regret its insultingly complacent chauvinism as Turkey goes its own way.

“Europeans underestimate the importance and influence of Turkey,” said Fuat Keyman, professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Koc university. “If they are serious about the future of Europe as a power in global affairs, they need to change their thinking.”

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Turkey’s increasingly important regional leadership role is also changing the way it views the EU. As a vital transit hub, it provides much of Europe’s oil and gas from the Caspian basin, Russia and, prospectively, the Turkic republics of central Asia. This is leading to closer cooperation with Moscow and reviving ideas of a Turkic Commonwealth from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan.

The “reformed Islamist” government in Ankara is also cultivating the Arab and Muslim world. It signalled a new strategic relationship with Egypt this week. It sent peacekeeping troops to Lebanon last year. It talks to Iran when many will not or cannot. Close links to Israel have not prevented the building of ties with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. And despite tensions with the Kurds, Turkey is northern Iraq’s main economic partner. Istanbul is the likely venue of next month’s Iraq summit.

Rising ultra-nationalism and “neo-Ottoman” thinking, Islamist extremism and political instability are the acknowledged dangers of Turkey’s rise. But its strength is its 70 million people’s drive and energy, a dynamic resource that flabby, middle-aged western Europe lacks.

And then, there is fierce pride. “Ours is the only country to reconcile Islam with a fully functioning, multiparty democracy in a modern, secular republic,” said opposition MP Sukru Elekdag. “Our experience shatters the myth that Islam cannot accommodate democracy.”

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