Turkey Joins the Fray

Turkey Joins the Fray

Last week Turkey offered to mediate talks between Iran and the Obama administration. This fits into a pattern of recent diplomatic assertiveness on the part of Turkey in regional and global affairs. Iran said today that it would welcome a Turkish mediation role.


Ezra Klein writes that Turkey is uniquely positioned for such a role due to its ability to bridge–geographically and ideologically–the Western and Muslim worlds.


Shadi Hamid, POMED’s Research Director, agrees, and argues that the constructive role played by Turkey’s AKP belies the notion that “Islamist parties and U.S. national security interests don’t necessarily go together.”  He writes that the AKP can play such a leading diplomatic role because of its democratic institutional legitimacy, and this perhaps “can serve as a model for what we might expect from other Islamist parties in the region.”