A 'Turkey' of a Policy.

• Author: Abrahamson, James L.
• Position: Report

A 'TURKEY' OF A POLICY

By Elliot Abrams, Senior Fellow for the Middle East, Council on Foreign Relations

http://weeklystandard.com/articles/turkey-policy

Prompted by the recent Gaza flotilla incident, former Bush Administration Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams offered a strategic analysis of the Middle East followed by an assessment of President Obama's response to that event.

Abrams first observed that Turkey has become a "staunch supporter" of the Middle East's radical camp and now seems eager to change the Arab-Israel problem from an issue involving Arab nationalism, and therefore open to compromise, to one essentially religious, and likely to end in violence. Noting the decline of Egyptian and Saudi influence, due to the age and ill health of Hosni Mubarak and Saud al-Faisal, he claimed that Arabs have once again become "objects" and not "actors" in their own history as "clever, unprincipled, energetic" Turks and Persians prepare to wreck havoc in the Middle East and increasingly dominate Islam.

For America's part, Abrams judged that Middle Easterners now regard us as a...