President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) remain Islamist at heart. This is more apparent today in Turkey’s domestic rather than its foreign policy though. In its foreign policy, there is a clear shift toward pragmatism.
Turkey is facing ever-increasing political, economic, social and security problems that are very real, and which require rational approaches that factor in the interests of the country as a whole.
It is dreadful to have one’s worst predictions for the incoming year confirmed so quickly and in such an inhumane manner. However, one does not need the ability to predict the future to understand why this is happening to us; nothing comes from a void.
We are leaving what has been one of the worst years for Turkey in recent history.
Turkey feels it has been deserted by its allies in Syria and left alone in its efforts to dislodge the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from the town of al-Bab near the Turkish border.
The murder of an ambassador is a serious matter in international affairs.
The fall of Aleppo has seemingly put Turkey at center stage again in the Syrian crisis.
President Recep Erdoğan spoke the truth when he said recently that Turkey is a European country. This may appear odd to those who predicate their outlook on religious factors. However, the geo-political geography that a country belongs to has to be considered from a much broader perspective.
We have the usual slew of condemnations and condolences from Europe after the twin bombings in Istanbul by a group attached to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which left 36 policemen and eight ordinary citizens, almost all of them young people, dead and 155 injured.
