Turkey: Ankara Getting Sucked into the Region's Sectarian Divide?
August 17, 2012 - 4:13pm, by Yigal Schleifer
The recent kidnapping of a Turkish businessman in Lebanon by a powerful Shiite clan retaliating for the abduction of one of its own by members of the opposition Free Syrian Army near Damascus is bad news for Ankara on several fronts. On the most basic level, it demonstrates that holding a Turkish passport no longer an indication that its bearer is somehow removed from or able to hover above the Middle East's current troubles. Quite the opposite -- it now appears that being Turkish makes one a major target. As Today's Zaman reports, the Turkish citizen kidnapped on Wednesday by the Lebanese Meqdad clan appears to have been abducted specifically because of Ankara's support for the FSA, which was responsible for detaining one of the clan's senior members, Hassan al-Meqdad. From TZ's report:
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