For decades, the “Middle East” has customarily been defined as the Arab world plus Israel, with the United States as the principal external power engaged in the region. Over the course of the last decade, that traditional definition of the Middle East has started to erode in important ways. One of the most significant points of transformation has been the rise of regional states from outside the Arab-Israeli arena as consequential players in the Middle East’s political, economic, and strategic affairs. Iran is an outstanding example of this phenomenon; Turkey is another.
This week Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Iran, where he met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Erdogan was supposed to come to the United States immediately following his departure from Tehran; the Prime Minister’s Washington visit has now been postponed until early December. As we pointed out in an earlier post, Turkey’s relations with the Islamic Republic have improved dramatically in recent years – economic relations are expanding rapidly and the foundations for closer energy links are being laid. And, as Erdogan himself made clear in an interview with The Guardian earlier this week, political ties between Turkey and Iran are becoming both broader and deeper.
Some in Washington and in Israel criticize Turkey’s burgeoning relationship with Iran, saying that it comes at the expense of Ankara’s longstanding ties to the United States and Israel. Against this, we argue – in an Op Ed published in today’s POLITICO, entitled “Turkey, the United States, and the New Middle East” —that Ankara’s approach to the Islamic Republic actually serves Western interests better than established U.S. policy.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett