Israel, US, Turkey, Palestine... help me here

[punisa]

Foreign policies are becoming murky and hard to follow.
Let us go over this again...

1) US is a big ally of Israel
2) US is a big ally of Turkey

So why are we seeing recent strong tensions between Turkey and Israel?
They have expelled Israeli ambassador.

Turkey strongly supports Palestine, US does not. Still Turkey is one of the biggest importers of US arms...

Who is on whose side here? The traditional line which separates friends from foes has been blurred completely.

There are many more examples. For instance you see US and Russian presidents getting cozy together on a number of occasions, while in the meantime US is building military fortresses all around Russia!

How do you stay on top of these confusing foreign policies? It all seems rather chaotic to me recently...

[tir1944]

It seems to me that Turkey is trying to become a real "regional leader",which i guess means that they simply have to renounce Israel as it's hated by all of its neighbors which Turkey is trying to become closer with.

[punisa]

It seems to me that Turkey is trying to become a real "regional leader",which i guess means that they simply have to renounce Israel as it's hated by all of its neighbors which Turkey is trying to become closer with.

I did hear stories that Turkey is slowly moving away from the Ataturk legacy. But what puzzles me here - is Turkey really so powerful that it can make such moves despite US wanting otherwise?
I always thought that US is strongly behind Turkey in many of its national and foreign policies.

[Smyg]

I'd say the US only supports Turkey has long as they aren't - openly - heavily hostile to US policy and Israel.

[¿Que?]

Well, alliances don't always line up perfectly. For example, Saudi Arabia supports the Palestinians (and let's not forget that most of the 911 hijackers were from SA). Pakistan, another friend of the US, used to, and still does I believe, have a cozy relationship with china. Venezuela, one of the US's sworn enemies, is like iirc the third largest importer of oil into the US. The list goes on and on.

[Devrim]

Turkey strongly supports Palestine, US does not. Still Turkey is one of the biggest importers of US arms...

Who is on whose side here? The traditional line which separates friends from foes has been blurred completely.

There are many more examples. For instance you see US and Russian presidents getting cozy together on a number of occasions, while in the meantime US is building military fortresses all around Russia!

How do you stay on top of these confusing foreign policies? It all seems rather chaotic to me recently...

I think that this is charecteristic of the period. In the time of the cold war, the leaders of the two major blocks were able to assert 'block discipline'. Now that this conflict no longer exists former members of the 'Western bloc' are pursuing their own interests, which at times clash with those of both the US and former allies.


It seems to me that Turkey is trying to become a real "regional leader",which i guess means that they simply have to renounce Israel as it's hated by all of its neighbors which Turkey is trying to become closer with.

Turkey does aspire to be a 'regional leader', but the use of 'have to' in your post suggests that they don't sincerely believe what they are saying about Israel and are merely doing it for real-politc reasons. I don't think that is really true. The people currently running Turkey are genuinlly opposed to the Israeli occupation. That doesn't mean that they can't shift in the future for real-politic reasons, but I don't think you can really doubt their sincerity over this.


I did hear stories that Turkey is slowly moving away from the Ataturk legacy.

These aren't just stories. It is something that has been happening quite openly over the last nine years.


But what puzzles me here - is Turkey really so powerful that it can make such moves despite US wanting otherwise?
I always thought that US is strongly behind Turkey in many of its national and foreign policies.

Turkey has many disagreements with the US. The first really open conflict was over the use of US bases in Turkey in the Iraq war, for which permission was refused. Probably the main source of disagreement is over the idea of an independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq, but others of course include Israel, US government statements on the Armenian genocide, as well as various incidents connected to Northern Iraq and the Kurdish issue, including the US arming PEJAK, the Iranian wing of the PKK, which of course ended up with US weapons filtering through to the PKK in Turkey, and the 'hooding incident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_event)'.

Public opinion in Turkey is staunchly anti-American. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the fact that the novel 'Metal Storm' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_fırtına) became at the time the best selling novel in Turkish history. I seriously doubt that there is another NATO country where the best selling novel in history includes one of the heros, a Turkish agent, detonating a nuclear weapon in Washington D.C.

Devrim