by WENDY KRISTIANASEN
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been on a roll for two months now: Turkey’s prime minister visited Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and was received in Washington. He has continued to take on Israel (“the West’s spoiled child”), backed the Arab uprisings, told the Arab League to vote for Palestinian statehood at the UN (“not a choice but an obligation”), delighted the Arab street and confounded Egyptian Islamists by defending secularism. His regional policy is all the more robust for the solid support it enjoys at home.
But behind the panache, there is prudence and pragmatism: Erdogan has reassured the US over Iran with his agreement to host a radar system for Nato’s missile shield; broken with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for failing to heed his advice on reform. Although Turkey may have suspended military ties with Israel, Erdogan hasn’t frozen economic ones. He even took part in the talks over Hamas’s release of reservist Gilad Shalit and welcomed into Turkey 11 Palestinian prisoners, released by Israel but banned from returning to the occupied territories.
At the same time, Erdogan faces domestic challenges that demand equal prudence and pragmatism. In the last few months there has been renewed violence by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with kidnappings, bombings, and shootings of civilians, to which the Turkish authorities have responded with a campaign of mass arrests. Even if this is not, for now, a return to the murderous 1990s, more than 200 people have been killed since June.
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