Never the Same? -- A Reading of Turkey After the Mavi Marmara

Protests in Istanbul continued on Saturday, drawing crowds in the thousands. AP Photo from Hurriyet Daily News

Upon the return of Turkish Ambassador Oguz Celikkol to Ankara, President Gul declared that Turkey's relations with Israel "will never be the same."

Departing for Ireland the day Israeli commandos raided the Mavi Marmara in international waters, I left Istanbul's Taksim Square with the images of enraged protestors fully in my mind. From Ireland, reports of continued mass protests drawing crowds of up to 10,000 and feiry statements of Turkish government officials flooded Irish radio and the BBC.

Ireland, too, was not without protest: the Irish-flagged Rachel Corrie, part of the same flotilla, had lagged behind the other vessels and the Irish government was insisting that it be allowed to reach Gaza without incident. Protests occurred in Dublin and Belfast, as they did in other places across the world. Though Ireland was much less at the center of the raid than Turkey, it was clear that the Israeli raid would affect not only Turkey-Israel relations, but how Israel was perceived throughout the world.

I won't take the time here to regurgitate the news surrounding the raid and the deaths of nine Turkish citizens, one of them also a dual citizen of my own country, other than to focus on the Turkish response and Turkey's demand that a UN-backed investigatory commission be authorized to investigate the incident (which Israel rejects) -- an insistence all the more justified in Turkish minds following the release of autopsy reports revealing that the nine victims had been peppered with bullets and some shot at a very close range.

Soon after the raid, the Turkish government condemned the Israeli action as tantamount to murder, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu describing the actions in front of the UN Security Council as "piracy" and "banditry." The response elicted from Prime Minister Erdogan, who flew back from a trip to Chile, was just as strong. Erdogan issued aggresive statements throughout the week, comparing the incident to Sept. 11, iterating the commandment not to kill in multiple languages before the glare of video cameras, and characterizing Hamas as an organization comprised of "resistance fighters."

Meanwhile, Israel moved quickly to portray the Turkish citizens killed as Islamic exremists and terrorists bent on waging global jihad against Israel, linking the still murky Turkish humanitarian aid organization at the center of the incident with global terrorist organizations, including al-Qa'ida (for more on the humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), see Yigal Schleifer's article in the Christian Science Monitor).

The difference in narratives striking, tempers waged throughout the week as the bodies of those killed were returned to Turkey amidst more protests and calls for Turkey to cut off all relations with Israel. The Turkish government recalled its ambassador, cancelled joint military exercises scheduled with Israel, and suspended work on energy projects. The Turkish parliament issued a strong resolution calling on the government to reconsider military and eocnomic ties with Israel.

Calls for an even stonger reaction resided throughout the Turkish public and were not limited to supporters of the AKP or stronger Islamist parties (see this poll), or even to particularly religious people for that matter. Criticism from Turkish opposition parties often urged the government to take stronger action, and newly-elected CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, while urging calm, has criticized the government for being "two-faced": "They’re saying ‘one minute’ in front of cameras, and ‘yes please’ behind closed doors."

Over the weekend, Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu engaged in mutual finger-pointing, both accusing the other of being under the undue influence of Israel. Referring to recent statements made by Fetullah Gulen and Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc that revealed a rift in the party over how to deal with Gaza, Kilicdaroglu declared that the "Tel Aviv advocate" is within the AKP. Tucked away in Pennsylvania, Gulen gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he criticized the IHH's failure to reach an agreement with Israel. In the interview, Gulen seemed to warn the Turkish government to be careful in its posturing vis-á-vis Israel for fear of damaging relations with the United States. Hurriyet Daily News columnist Mehmet Ali Birand picked up on this message in his column today:

Gülen explicitly warns Turkey.

He opposes entering such a process with the National View. For, the IHH is according to him a radical Islamic movement and he believes turning this humane help attempt into an Islamic help movement would harm Turkey very much.

Gülen with his approach does not oppose the AKP. He just criticizes IHH’s attitude. He warns that such steps might go as far as cutting off relations between Turkey, the United States and Israel. He draws attention to how dangerous the situation is. It seems as if he says, “These guys are about to cause trouble for the country, stop them.”

According to Birand, AKP Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc might well have heeded Gulen's call when he said on Friday, "The hoca points in the right direction."

In an interview with KanalTurk on Sunday, Arinc expressed that more tension with Israel should be avoided, seeming to call on the IHH and other organizations to the right to back off. Whether Gulen and Arinc's statements are made for fear of weakening ties with the United States and Israel and/or are motivated by concern that Islamist parties to the right of the AKP might get a boost out of the incident in the same way they did after Israel's incursion into Gaza at the end of 2008 is unclear (see Jan. 14, 2009 post), but the question should be on the radar of those observing the AKP's Israel policy in coming weeks.

If Turkey-Israel relations are to be normalized, and even more importantly, if the United States is to preserve good relations with Israel, efforts should be made to come to a consensus on the investigatory commission proposed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Ankara has put the commission forward as essential to its normalization of relations with Tel Aviv, and while Tel Aviv, for its part, continues to resist, it is no doubt looking to gain the approval of the Obama Administration as it moves to craft its own internal investigation. For the United States, the Turkey-Israel alliance forged in 1996 is one of the few bright spots in the Middle East, and given the amount of political ill will toward nine Turkish citizens being killed by Israeli commandos in international waters, it would make sense to do everything in its power to somehow bring Turkey and Israel into some sort of compromise.

Turkey took a powerful first step despite all the feiry -- and, at times, more than unseemly -- rhetoric coming from government officials this week insomuch as it welcomed a rather vague statement coming from the UN Security Council last week without making too much fuss (the statement, falling short of a resolution, condemned "those actions" resulting in death, without assigning responsibility).

Given the gravity of animus toward Israel inside Turkey at the moment, as well as calls from other governments around the world for an independent investigation (including the UN Human Rights Council, the resolution of which the United States voted against), it would make sense for the all parties to do everything in its power to assure a comprehensive and open investigation of both the Israeli military's actions and the activities of the IHH.

For more on Turkey-Israel relations, see past posts.


UPDATE I (6/7) -- Two interesting analyses worth drawing attention to are Hugh Pope's piece in Friday's The Guardian and Steven A. Cook's assessment of Turkey-U.S. relations in Foreign Policy. Pope urges that Turkey's rift with Israel not be looked at as a turn away from the West, but rather as the response to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. For Pope, when one objectively looks at Turkish policy in the Middle East in recent years, the country can be seen as "explicitly imitating lessons from the EU that proved how such convergence can end cycles of conflict." Cook, examining crucial foreign policy differences between Turkey and the United States, portrays the two countries as "frenemies," concluding the two countries competing strategic powers in the Middle East. See also a very insightful, albeit tragic, analysis by Alon ben Meir thanks to Jenny White at Kamil Pasha.

UPDATE II (6/8) -- Hosting the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Istanbul, Turkey took the opportunity of the conference to condemn Israel in an attachment to the conference's final declaration. 21 of the 22 countries in attendance, all save Israel and including Russia, joined the statement, calling for an international investigatory commission to be setup and condeming Israel's use of force in international waters. Though not linking the statement to the flotilla incident, Russian President Vladmir Putin said the Blue Steam II natural gas project, linking Russian gas supplies to Israel and Turkey, might not extend to Israel due to lack of demand.

UPDATE III (6/9) -- For a decent summary of the military, economic, and energy ties between Turkey and Israel and potential ramifications of the flotilla affair, see Saban Kardas' analysis in the Eurasia Daily Monitor. Though trade with Israel constitutes only one percent of Turkey's total foreign trade, much of it food imports, Ha'aretz reports that some Israeli supermarkets are already boycotting Turkish goods.

Deadlock Official

Armenia's ruling coalition announced this morning that the protocols signed with Turkey are stalled, and that it is up to Turkey to take further action. Essentially, according to the Armenians, the ball is in Turkey's court. The announcement, coming just two days before President Obama will commemorate the large-scale massacre of Armenians under Ottoman rule in 1915, can be read as an attempt to up the ante in Washington. In its statement, the ruling coalition described Turkey's linkage of the Protocols' ratification with progress on Nagorno-Karabakh as unacceptable. For the full text of the statement, click here. Turkey, for its part, continues to insist that the Armenian constitutional court decision delivered last February also puts acceptable preconditions on the Protocols, hindering their full implementation (namely, on the point of the "historical commission"). From Prime Minister Erdogan's response to the Armenian statement, it does not look as if the statement will make Turkey budge, nor should it have been expected to -- probably owing more to a desire to influence Washington, than Turkey. Some speculated that the two sides had made progress at the nuclear summit in Washington last week, but clearly there is a long way to go. For background, see past posts.


UPDATE I (4/23) -- Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan addressed the Armenian public last night. Bianet has the summary. For the United States' response, click here.

UPDATE II (4/27) -- The International Crisis Group (ICG)'s Sabine Frazier has written an excellent short analysis of the stalled agreement. From the piece:

In spring 2009, Baku's leadership began to appeal not only to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan but also to the Turkish opposition to keep the border shut until its occupied territories were liberated. It threatened Turkey's preferential price for its Shah Deniz natural gas supplies and chances of greater volume to feed the planned Nabucco transit pipeline to Europe. In January of this year, for the first time, Azerbaijan provided significant amounts of gas to Russia. Popular mood against Turkey hardened in Baku, with official support and even puppets of Turkey's leaders being burned in some protests.

Turkish leaders decided that they could not ignore Azerbaijani pressure and with difficult negotiations going on concerning constitutional reform, they do not want to pick a fight over border opening with nationalists in the parliamentary opposition -- and within their own ruling party. Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan made increasingly unambiguous statements that without progress on settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the border would not open, even though this was the strategy applied by Ankara since 1993 with little conflict resolution effect.

In the past several months Turkey did succeed in contributing to reinvigorating efforts to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict under the aegis of the OSCE Minsk Group. Armenia and Azerbaijan are closer than ever to signing the agreement on basic principles that they have been considering since 2005. But they have not narrowed their differences on the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh. While there has been some movement on defining an “interim status” for the entity, Armenia insists that it should have the right to self determination including secession from Azerbaijan, while Azerbaijan says that its territorial integrity cannot be violated.

The Armenian government also did little over the past several months to reaffirm its commitment to difficult aspects of the protocols. Rather it tried to distance itself from the establishment of a committee on the historical dimension “including an impartial scientific examination of the historical records and archives.” For Armenians such a commission is generally perceived as a fundamental violation of their very national identity. They don't accept that “the genocide fact” can be discussed. Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan made this most clear in an April interview to Der Spiegel criticizing the idea of a historical commission as “calling into question the fact of the genocide perpetrated against our people.”

Both the Armenian and Turkish leadership comes out of the past months weakened. Armenian President Sarksyan has been heavily criticized by his opposition for making too many concessions to the Turkish side, believing that the border could open despite Azerbaijan's firm opposition and losing a realistic chance in 2009 that US President Barack Obama would state that he recognized the mass killings and deportations of Ottoman Armenians 1915 as genocide. The Armenian parliamentary decision is a victory for the more hard-line Armenian diaspora and a defeat of Armenian sovereign foreign policy making.

UPDATE I (4/23) -- The Global Post's Nichole Sobecki has an informative piece up on the Turkey-Armenia rapprochement, in which a variety of voices may be heard. The piece also has some striking photography of Van, where many Armenians used to reside before the deporations/massacres.

UPDATE II (4/27) -- Eurasia Daily Monitor analyst Vladimir Socor has put out an insightful piece criticizing the logic of the Obama Administration's approach to the Protocols. An excerpt:

Since April 2009, US President, Barack Obama’s administration has pressed for opening Turkey’s border with Armenia unconditionally Thus, the October 2009 Zurich protocols, strongly backed by the US, required Turkey to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia and open the mutual border “without preconditions.”

Washington’s policy seems driven primarily by domestic politics. The administration hopes to remove the annual drama of Armenian genocide recognition from the center-stage of US politics. It seeks its way out of the dilemma of losing Turkey versus any loss of the US Armenian vote. “Normalization” of Turkish-Armenian relations, centered on the re-opening of that border, was offered as a substitute for the unfulfilled electoral-campaign promises to recognize an Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.

Washington’s normalization concept, however, has also turned out to be unfulfilled. Tilting sharply in Armenia’s favor at Azerbaijan’s expense, it backfired first in Azerbaijan and shortly afterward in Turkey. Instead of de-aligning Ankara from Baku, as seemed briefly possible, it led Turkey and Azerbaijan to close ranks against an unconditional “normalization” of Turkish-Armenian relations, prior to a first-stage withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan.

The US initiative seemed unrelated to any regional strategy in the South Caucasus. It actually coincided with an overall reduction of US engagement in that region, downgrading the earlier goals of conflict-resolution and promotion of energy projects. Moreover, it risked splitting its strategic partner Azerbaijan from Turkey, compromising the basis for a subsequent return to an active US policy in the region.

. . . .

The logic of the administration’s initiative from 2009 to date has implied that Washington would “deliver” the re-opening of Turkey’s border with Armenia; while Turkey would in turn “deliver” Azerbaijan by opening the Turkish-Armenian border, without insisting on the withdrawal of Armenian troops from inner-Azeri territories. That conditionality is a long-established one in these negotiations. However, Washington currently insists that the two processes be separated and that Turkey opens that border unconditionally as per the October 2009 Zurich protocols.

Breaking that linkage would irreparably compromise the chances of a peaceful, stage-by-stage settlement of the Armenian-Azeri conflict. It would indefinitely prolong the Armenian military presence inside Azerbaijan, placing Russia in a commanding position to arbitrate the conflict, with unprecedented leverage on an Azerbaijan alienated from its strategic allies.

While Washington was surely not expecting such a strong response from Azerbaijan (see Jan. 24 post), it is now all the more clear that a rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey must involve Azerbaijan, taking into account the concerns and interests of all parties involved. While it is perhaps possible to criticize Turkey for placing preconditions on the Protocols, it is also possible to criticize the United States and Europe for not adequately taking into account the amount of pressure Azerbaijan is able to exert over Turkey. Turkey might well "deliver" Azerbaijan, but only if the Azeris are made part of the process. The Obama Administration's exclusion of Azerbaijan from the nuclear summit in Washington on April 12-13 marked a continuation of this oversight, and it is only hoped that the United States will amend its logic in the future.

UPDATE III (5/8) -- Yigal Schleifer gives another good account of the breakdown of the rapproachment at the Eurasianet website.

Armenia (Continued . . .)

The spat about the Armenian Constitutional Court ruling on the ratification of the Protocols hoped to be signed between Turkey and Armenia continues with no end in sight. Since the court decision, Turkey has seemed to focus its argumentative energy on the historical commision the Protocols would establish. While it was unclear from the beginning just what such a commission would look like, the Turkish government claims that the Armenian Constitutional Court's reference to a specific article of the Armenian Declaration of Independence hinders the implications of the Protocols. The article in question reads that Armenia will not retreat from its position that the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 constituted a genocide.

However, long before the Armenian Constitutional Court decision, Turkey had tried to link the Protocols to settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Prime Minister Erdogan explicitly linking the two matters when he met with President Obama in Washington in December. While some analysts maintain that Turkey is merely looking for a way to get out of the Protocols, especially following the angry response from Azerbaijan, Turkish diplomats continue to reiterate their support for the process and have asked Swiss mediators, as well as the United States, to provide written assurance that the Armenian Constitutional Court's decision will not place impediments on the proposed historical commission to discuss what happened in 1915. So far, Switzerland and the United States have said they have no intention to do so, and that the Armenian court decision in no way impedes implementation of the Protocols. The United States, in particular, has lauded the Armenian Constitutional Court decision for moving the process forward, characterizing Turkey's responses as "exaggerated." Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has been trying to persuade Washington otherwise, so far holding talks with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State James Seteinberg, National Security Advisor James Jones, and Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Turkish government has expressed that it feels pressured by the United States, and these accusations of undue meddling only increased with news that the House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to take up consideration of yet another resolution calling for President Obama to recognize 1915 as a genocide. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman said the committee will consider the resolution in early March, in time for it to moved to the House floor for a vote before April 15, the day on which the start of the massacres is memorialized and on which Obama will or will not name the event a "genocide."

Armenian President Serge Sarkisian called on Turkey last week to expedite the ratification process, asking President Gul to help overcome the opposition and clear the way for a vote by the Turkish Parliament. Prime Minister Erdogan, who commands a majority in Parliament, has not moved to put the issue forward; meanwhile, Armenia has threatened to annul the process should Turkey not move forward. Pressure from the Armenian opposition will only increase as April 24 approaches, and though Sarkisian has a solid majority in the Armenian parliament, he is in a much less tenable political position than Erdogan. Armenian opposition figures are insisting that the Protocols are merely an excuse for President Obama to yet again refrain from calling 1915 a "genocide," and that the Protocols are a diplomatic convenience for the United States president to eschew the genocide issue. The Armenian parliament is also preparing legislation to allow the president to remove his signature from international treaties.

There is also plenty of pressuring from Azerbaijan. Azeri Ilham President Aliyev has expressed his confidence that Turkey would not ratify the treaty without the Nagorno-Karabakh link. Aliyev has repeated old threats that he could direct gas away from Turkey and toward Russia, which has promised to buy as much gas from Azerbaijan as it can supply. Meanwhile, Armenia played up its ties with Iran this week, concluding deals to build a transnational railway and energy facilities with the Iranians, a move speculated to strengthen Armenia's hand and pressure the United States not to call on Armenia to make additional concessions.

Gas Crisis to Boost Turkey's Hand with Europe

Europe's recent gas crisis lends additional support to the argument that the EU needs a strong relationship with Turkey in order to shore up its energy security. Turkey should not only strengthen its hands going into negotiations with Europe over the Nabucco pipeline, which is set to supply Europe with gas from Central Asia via pipelines laid over Turkey. For more an Nabucco, see this article from the Guardian on Wednesday.

All incoming gas from Russia into Turkey (almost 65& of its total supply) has been cut as a result of Gazprom's dispute with the Ukraine, although the Turkish government has retained the position that there will be enough gas to meet demand. There has been discussion that Turkey might broker a deal with Iran to increase the amount of gas currently being supplied by the Iranians, but the government is reluctant to consider this option.

For analysis by Saban Kardas at EDM, click here. For an excellent synopsis of Turkey's energy policy, focused primarily on its dealings with Europe in energy security matters, see Katinka Barysch's "Turkey's Role in European Energy Security," published in December 2007 by the Center for European Reform.

In related news, Turkey denied Greece's request to be supplied additional gas.

Spooky

From Emrullah Uslu at EDM:

The leader of the IP, Dogu Perincek, now an Ergenekon suspect, is a former Maoist, who advocates “Eurasianism” as opposed to Turkish membership in the EU and NATO. Despite having only marginal public support, he has become an important figure dominating public debates in recent years.

In one of his interviews Tuncay Guney claims that Dogu Perincek was the author of Ergenekon’s program. Guney says that the purpose of the Ergenekon program was to promote Turkey membership in the Shanghai Five (Bugun, September 11). The Shanghai Five, which consists of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan, emerged from demilitarization talks that the four former Soviet republics held with China in 1996 to counter U.S influence in Asia (Newsweek Korea, May 4, 2001).

Zekeriya Ozturk, another Ergenekon suspect who once worked for the IP’s TV network, also accused Perincek of being an agent working for the Russian and Chinese intelligence services; but Perincek denied the allegations (Radikal, March 30). Perincek’s close associate Adnan Akfirat, another Ergenekon suspect, is the chairman of the Turkish-Chinese business association (www.chinaembassy.org.tr, June 6, 2006). It should also be noted that Perincek was an early proponent of Turkish-China-Russia relations. His daughter is a journalist working for Chinese Public Radio’s Turkish Program (Yeni Safak, April 26); and his son, Mehmet Bora Perincek, is a researcher in Moscow and is establishing connections between the Turkish Worker’s Party and the Russian Eurasia party. In a meeting between the two parties it was declared:



The United States has always tried to beleaguer our particularly continental civilizations. Today this process is being continued under the patronage of American secret centers [promoting] the concept of pan-Turkism in Turkey and national chauvinism in Russia toward the Turkic nations. “The Eurasia” and “The Worker’s Party” representatives came to an understanding about the concerted consultations, conferences, and colloquiums in the sphere of Russian-Turkish geopolitical rapprochement. “The Worker’s Party” leadership has been interested in the unique means of solving interethnic conflicts developed by the experts for the Center of Geopolitical Examinations and “The Eurasia” party on the basis of the concept of “nations’ rights.” They proposed that “The Eurasia” take part in a conference of groups working on the solution of the Turkish-Greek conflict in Cyprus on the grounds of the geopolitical Eurasian methodology. “The Worker’s Party” responded willingly to the proposal of taking part in organizing the international Eurasian movement. These exciting ideas have been lined up by its intellectuals for a long time. We are also willing to begin a number of concerted projects in the sphere of TV broadcasting, publishing activities, [and] economic collaboration (http://www.evrazia.org, November 11, 2003).


As the meeting notes show, the Worker’s Party suddenly started advocating Turkish nationalist policies. Veli Kucuk, a retired general and a leading Ergenekon suspect, brought the younger Perincek, who participated in the 2003 meeting in Russia, together with Levent Temiz, another Ergenekon suspect, who was then the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)’s youth leader. In 2003 the two formed a youth alliance between the Maoists and Turkish Nationalists, who were once fiercely opposed to each other (Zaman, January 15, 2004).

As was planned at the meeting in Moscow, the Workers’ Party issued an invitation to Alexander Dugin to attend the International Eurasia conference in Ankara. Dugin, the leader of the Eurasian movement, was introduced as an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Former Turkish President Suleyman Demirel; former Turkish Cypriot President Rauf Denktas; the Iranian and Chinese ambassadors; former chairman of the National Security Council General Tuncer Kilinc, Ret.; former commander of the Gendarmes Sener Eruygur, now an Ergenekon suspect; and the leaders of the Workers Party attended the conference to discuss Turkey’s role in Eurasia (Ulusal Kanal, December 6, 2004).

In a live TV broadcast, Guney further accused Dogu Perincek as playing a vital role in bringing Turkey closer to Russia and China. Guney stated, “Dogu Perincek should reveal why Putin’s people provided economic and ideological support to the Eurasia Conference” (Taraf, November 2).

Given Tuncay Guney’s affiliation with the MIT, it seems very likely that the intelligence service used Guney to penetrate the Ergenekon network in order to detect activities aimed at shifting Turkey’s direction from the West to Eurasia.

In the Middle of a Difficult Situation

I have been remiss to write much about Turkey's role in the Georgian conflict, but will now take the time to post some links to some recent analyses. In the weeks before I left Turkey, the Georgian crisis loomed large in the minds of many Turks with whom I talked. Sadly, many young people my age feared Turkey being dragged into a war as a proxy of United States' ambitions to counter Russian aggression.

From the German Marshall Fund:

After Georgia: Turkey's Looming Foreign Policy Dilemmas
Written by Ian Lesser
August 26, 2008
By all indications, the crisis in Georgia is unlikely to end anytime soon. Even if Russian forces withdraw to negotiated positions, there is every prospect for a sustained Russian political and security presence in the country. Under these conditions, Ankara will once again face Russian power directly on its borders. In the near-term, Turkey will face difficult policy choices in reconciling the country's Russian and Western interests. Even more difficult dilemmas are on the horizon as a more competitive relationship with Russia looms, and NATO is compelled to rethink its own strategy and posture. How should Turkey's foeign policy be shaped?

Crisis in the South Caucasus: Turkey's Big Moment
Written by Amerin Zaman
August 25, 2008
As the only NATO member to border the Caucasus. Turkey control the Bosporus and Dardanelles, through which Russia and other Black Sea countries conduct most of their trade. The conflict between Georgia and Russia offers Turkey a unique opportunity to bolster its regional clout, to check Russian and Iranian influence, and to help secure the flow of Western-bound oil and natural gas from former Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan. Will Turkey's leaders rise to the occasion?

Click here for a link to both.

Click here for "Turkey's Delicate Balancing Act in the Black Sea," by Saban Kardaş, Eurasia Daily Monitor (Aug. 27)

Click here for news analysis from LALE SARIIBRAHIMOĞLU at Today's Zaman (Aug. 22)