"Ottoman ghosts: Turkey in the Middle East
BY MATEIN KHALID
27 September 2006
THE Turkish Parliament has now voted to send troops on the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. This is a milestone event in Turkish foreign policy under the Recip Tayyip Erdogan government. The 340 -192 vote is a political victory for the Prime Minister and a strategic paradigm shift in Turkish foreign relations from the West to its Middle Eastern neighbourhood. Erdogan spent a huge amount of political capital convincing opponents of the Lebanon troop deployment that Turkish participation in an international force would not be a diplomatic coup for Israel or the United States. Lebanon is, after all, a former province of the Ottoman Empire’s Syrian possessions."
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