Photo Gallery Turkey Turns Away
When, at a European Union summit in 2002, new Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a newcomer in Europe, was brushed off by then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac over his country's EU ambitions, he is said to have taken it very personally. Erdogan was determined to go down in history as the Turk who brought his country into the "Christian club."
Fifteen years after Turkey had submitted its first formal application, the German and French leaders told Erdogan he would have to wait a little longer before accession talks with Ankara could begin. Seven years later, Erdogan has turned Turkey around and humiliated everyone who once treated him as a religious simpleton. The Turkish economy is expected to grow by more than 5 percent this year.
But Turkey's aspirations to join the European Union, which began in 1963, have languished, despite the progress the country has made in meeting Brussels' stringent criteria. Official negotiations began in 2005, but Brussels continued to stall the talks, even as one former Eastern Bloc country after another was accepted.
But Erdogan's enthusiasm for EU membership waned halfway between German Chancellor Angela Merkel's assumption of office in 2005 and that of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. If there is one issue on which these two leaders agree, it is their opposition to full EU membership for Turkey.
During the past few years, relations between Turkey and Israel have also soured -- far more severely than those with the EU. As long ago as the 1940s, Turkey was a refuge for Europe's persecuted Jews, and in 1949 it was the first primarily Islamic country to recognize the Jewish state of Israel. But after Israel launched the Operation Cast Lead offensive in the Gaza Strip in December 2008, which killed at least 1,400 Palestinians, including women and children, that alliance quickly came undone.
During a January debate at the World Economic Forum in 2009, Erdogan stormed out of a session with Israeli President Shimon Peres. As he walked out, he shouted at Peres: "You kill people. I remember the children who died on the beaches."
A little over a year later, sentiment worsened after the Israelis attacked a Turkish-flagged ship that was allegedly part of a humanitarian flotilla seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza. Nine activists were killed in the incident, including eight Turks and a United States citizen of Turkish origin.
The incident triggered mass protests in Ankara, Turkey. Erdogan accused Israel of "state terrorism," withdrew his ambassador and went to far as to claim that the world "now perceives the swastika and the Star of David together." In a speech before parliament, the Turkish leader said: "Today is a turning point in history. Nothing will be the same again."
Turkish mourners in Istanbul carry the coffins of two of the nine activists who were on board the Mavi Marmara ship.
The turnaround in relations with the West are reflected in Turkey's relationship with Iran, a country Ankara has eyed with suspicion since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Last Wednesday, Turkey voted against a package of sanctions with which Washington, London, Paris and Berlin -- and even Moscow and Beijing -- hope to stop Iran's controversial nuclear program. The West is shocked. The country with the second-largest army in NATO is suddenly a friend of the mullahs? Some in the United States and Germany are already predicting a new "axis of evil."
Who is to blame for Turkey's political shift? Erdogan? Israel? The Europeans? Who lost Turkey? If the country appears to be moving eastward, says US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, it is "in no small part because it was pushed, and pushed by some in Europe refusing to give Turkey the kind of organic link to the West that Turkey sought."
