"Turkey: Speaking Truth to Power
Posted on Monday, August 15, 2011
by Steven Cook
My old friend Suat Kinikloglu recently penned an op-ed in the English language daily, Today’s Zaman, called “Questioning Turkey’s ‘doves’ on Syria.” It is one of the most interesting articles on Turkey and its Syria problem that I have read since the uprising against Bashar al Assad began last March. Suat, who entered parliament as an AKP backbencher in 2007, rose to become the spokesmen of the Grand National Assembly’s foreign affairs committee, the party’s deputy chairman of external affairs, and chair of the Turkish-American Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group. He was left off AKP’s parliamentary list for the June elections. From my perspective, the party is worse off for it. When Suat was in parliament, he was a loyal soldier to the AKP cause and became an influential voice, but he was never a hack. His piece on Turkey and Syria is a subtle critique of the government’s present approach to Syria, warning that Turkey’s continued “caution” as Assad brutalizes his own people will necessarily diminish Ankara’s influence and compromise its efforts to build a new regional order."
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