Turkey Continues to Mediate Between Arabs and Israel

August 6th, 2008 By: Michael van der Galien | Tags:
Leave a comment | Trackback

Although PoliGazette frequently criticizes Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, we have to give credit where credit is due when it comes to Erdogan’s attempt to bring Arab countries and Israel together. Erdogan is now meeting with Syria’s President Bashir Assad.

Turkey has been mediating between Israel and Syria for a while a now; the fifth round of mediated talks are scheduled for half August. As of yet, though, Turkey’s mediation has not resulted in immediate talks between the two enemies. As long as these two countries do not speak to each other, a solution remains an impossibility.

However, Turkey is doing something most Western countries refuse to do, or have failed to do, and it is paying off in so far that both Israel and Syria are willing to talk and possibly to compromise. Also important is that the talks are led by a country that does not have the image of being either strongly pro-Israel or pro-Arab. Turkey is pretty much neutral and able to get along with both sides in the conflict.

Erdogan’s decision to mediate in this affair is smart; it once again emphasizes Turkey’s increasing importance in the region. Well done.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • SphereIt
  • NewsVine
  • TailRank
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  1. SAS
    August 6th, 2008 at 23:19
    Reply | Quote | #1

    This is a joke, right ? With his strong economic record and attempts to democratize Turkey, Erdogan is arguably the best leader Turkey has had since Kemal Ataturk. The attempts by Turkey to mediate between Israel and its neighbours is another one in a long list of endeavours on the part of the erudite Mr Erdogan, whether it ends up being counted amongst his successes remains to be seen.

  2. nyoped
    August 7th, 2008 at 18:58
    Reply | Quote | #2

    30 years of terror campaign was not as effective to divide the nation as Erdogan’s divisive policies. AKP has done nothing other than following the economic program prepared by the previous government and even though it had 5 years to prepare another economic development program they have delivered nothing. AKP is nothing but a party of  The citizens who voted for AKP should stop cheerleeding and start questioning (assuming they are not paid for the PR).

PoliGazette Comments Policy

PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree. Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors. Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.

(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly or blatantly misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should not be posted.

(2) Comments should avoid vulgarity as well as racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual bigotry.

(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.

(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.

(5) Public figures are considered open to all substantive criticism of their policies and statements. Comments that present objectively false factual information about public figures (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim") or that attack public figures by attacking their families are not welcome. Comments that merely repeat slogans for or against a candidate without engaging in substantive comment are not welcome.

Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors by email only.


Warning: is_writable() [function.is-writable]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(error_log) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/p6525pol:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in /home/p6525pol/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 500