The New Anatolian

OPINION

Tuesday 06th of January 2009 06:29:03 AM GMT+2

Ties with Arab world not alternative to EU

Turkey is not seeking an alternative to its ties with the West or its full membership to the European Union. As a matter of fact enhancing its relations with the Arab world is a part for its quest to strengthen its position in the Western world.

Ilnur Cevik

17 January 2008

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ilnurcevik@yahoo.com

Turkey's growing relations with the Arab world especially in the past five years is being regarded by some circles as an attempt by Ankara to create an alternative for itself against the European Union.

These circles claim that Turkey is being pushed out of the European union so the Turkish administration has moved to create an alternative for itself by forging closer relations with the Islamic world in general and the Arab world in particular.

This is dead wrong.

The Turkish government has set its pro-Western course long time ago when the Justice and Development (AK) Party came to power.

Yet, the AK Party officials led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul who was also in the administration for the past five years first briefly as prime minister and then for a long period as foreign minister have set a very clever course for Turkey seeing that they would sooner or later run into trouble in their quest to join the European Union.

AK Party has always wanted to enhance its close relations with the United States and has put much energy into this. Now we are seeing the fruits of this policy with the successive successful visits of Prime Minister Erdogan and President Gul to Washington in a time span of two months.

But above all the AK party wants to usher Turkey into the EU and thus bring our country into the fold of the family of civilized nations.

However, with the current arbitrary obstacles being put before it, the AK Party government has seen that it has to show to the people and intelligentsia of the EU countries that it is invaluable for their vital economic and security interests. This can only be done by revitalizing Turkey's standing in the Middle East, in Central Asia, Caucasus and the Balkans.

Turkey has shown it can effectively mediate for an end to the impasses in many places. It has used its good offices to mend fences between Iran and the West over the nuclear crisis, it has brought Afghanistan and Pakistan in Ankara together at a summit to end the chill in their relations, it is mediating and end to the lack of direct dialogue between Syria and Israel, it is trying to help in ending the Lebanese presidential impasse and last but not least it is undertaking peace projects to enhance peace between the Palestinians and Israel. There are also several initiatives that Turkey is undertaking behind close doors which we do not want to mention but are well known by our Western allies.

All these enhance Turkey's role in the eyes of the West and as times goes by and Ankara manages to bring these efforts to the attention of the European public opinion people will start realizing the importance of including our country in the EU.

So what Turkey is doing is not to turn its back on the EU but to actually use the enhanced ties with the Arab world to strengthen its hands in the accession process.

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