"Turkey's Transformers
The AKP Sees Big
November/December 2009
Morton Abramowitz and Henri J. Barkey
MORTON ABRAMOWITZ, a Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation, was U.S. Ambassador to Turkey in 1989-91. HENRI J. BARKEY is a nonresident Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University.
In recent years, Turkey has earned kudos from the international community for its economic dynamism, its energetic and confident diplomacy, and its attempts to confront some of its deepest foreign policy problems, such as in northern Iraq and Cyprus. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that Turkey is one of seven rising powers with which the United States will actively collaborate to resolve global problems. But Turkey has not yet become the global, or even regional, player that its government declares it to be. These days, as always, daunting domestic issues are bedeviling Turkey's progress. Increasingly polarized views about the leadership of the ruling Justice and Development Party (known as the AKP) have undermined the government's ability to spearhead profound political change. Even some of the AKP's traditional supporters have begun to question whether the party will follow through on its goals, including that of getting Turkey to join the European Union."
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