Thomas Friedman manages to write an
entire column on the deterioration of U.S.-Turkish relations and never once mentions the Iraq war, the PKK (which has revived since the start of the Iraq war), the weak U.S. response to the flotilla raid, or the Tehran nuclear deal that he and the administration both dismissed with contempt. If we’re apportioning blame for what has encouraged Turkey on its more independent course, we can assign quite a bit to both the Bush and Obama administrations, but that is not the only thing that interests me here. Friedman passes over U.S. mistakes in silence, because this makes it easier to portray Erdogan as the sole culprit responsible for wrecking U.S.-Turkish relations and it helps the misleading “the Islamists are coming!” narrative take hold.
A useful counterpoint to Friedman is a recent column by Ömer Taspinar, who provides what seems to me to be one of the more persuasive explanations for why the Turkish government has been acting as it has over the last several years. Taspinar starts by questioning the handy, potentially misleading Islamic/secular distinction that practically every Western observer, including myself, has used at one time or another:
For more: Eunomia
No comments:
Post a Comment