How To Make Turkey Great Again – OpEd

Source:Eurasian Review Date:09Apr2020

An op-ed piece by a former diplomat which is suprrisnigly symphatheitc to Turkey. It addresses all the topics that distances the  country from the Wst, clogging the domestic dynamics for development. This Editor may not agree with all the recommendations, but the list certainly worth going over.

Here is catchy paragraph:

As a former diplomat posted to Ankara in 2010, I had the good fortune to familiarize myself with the Turkish people and its institutions and government. It is far from perfect but it deserves our interest and attention in view of its strategic importance in several critical regions of the world.

Turkey has been much maligned by those who seek to label it an example of political Islam or a totalitarian society. Such observations miss the mark and tend to sell the Turkish people short. This article does not ask why Turkey should become great again. Given its historic and strategic situation, a strong democratic Turkey is an indispensable asset to NATO and for lasting peace in the region.

Let us start by solving the Armenian genocide question by relegating it to study by a comité de sages. This notion has already been raised elsewhere but it needs to be actualized in order to get it out of the political sphere and into the hands of historians and academics. If the genocide did happen, Turkey should make an apology and move on. Every year in France, Canada and the United States, the Turks fight a rear-guard diplomatic action against parliamentary resolutions condemning the alleged Turkish genocide. Its impact on Turkish-American relations is disastrous given the pro-Armenian lobby and its power in both the state and federal legislatures.