It is tempting to see in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent diplomatic maneuvers a return to Turkey’s vaunted “Zero Problems” foreign policy doctrine of the late 2000s, when Ankara aspired to amity with the wider Middle East. Having spent most of the past decade burning bridges across the region, Erdogan now seems keen to repair the damage.
But one problem remains: Erdogan himself. The president’s predilection for flame-throwing remains undimmed, and when faced with political difficulty at home, he tends to train his incendiary rhetoric on Turkey’s friends, near and far. For instance, he has likened Israel to Nazi Germany (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov may have been taking notes), accused the United Arab Emirates of destabilizing the Middle East and said he would never talk to the Egyptian leader, General Abdel-Fattah El Sisi.
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Turkish President Erdogan's Outreach to Neighbors Has One Problem: Erdogan - Bloomberg
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