"Turkey emerges as Middle East leader
By Henri Barkey, Special to CNN
June 3, 2010 -- Updated 1126 GMT (1926 HKT)
Editor's note: Henri J. Barkey is a professor of international relations at Lehigh University and a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is co-author, with Graham Fuller, of 'Turkey's Kurdish Question' and editor of 'Reluctant Neighbor: Turkey's Role in the Middle East.'
(CNN) -- The recent flotilla incident is the culmination of a steep decline in Israeli-Turkish relations that started with the Gaza war in 2008 and 2009. Relations between these two countries, after reaching a high point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, are now beyond repair, and it will probably take the better part of a decade for them to be resuscitated."
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