Foes accuse Turkey of Islamising foreign policy - by Gareth Jones
Erdogan seems to be vying to become more popular than Arab leaders in the Middle East, but this is a dangerous tactic’ US Congressman Robert Wexler did not mince his words during a visit to Ankara last week when he condemned Turkey’s decision in February to host leaders of the militant Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. “Your opponents have been bolstered and your friends have been deflated (by that invitation),” he told a gathering that included members of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Foreign Ministry officials. Wexler’s comments, coming nearly two months after the event, underlined the continued repercussions of a visit that outraged Israel and the United States, dismayed the EU and many Turkish diplomats and stirred suspicions that the AKP wants to remould Turkey’s foreign policy along more Islamist lines.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has roots in political Islam, has defended the decision as an attempt, made in good faith, to bridge the gulf between Israel and the Palestinians, who had just handed power to Hamas in a democratic election.
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