Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Asia Times | How Turkey dumped ‘no problems with neighbors’ policy | Article

How Turkey dumped ‘no problems with neighbors’ policy

By JOSEPH DANA

What happened to Turkey’s soft foreign policy? Not so long ago, Turkey’s famed “no problems with neighbors” policy was the darling of international geopolitics. In the 2000s, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spent a decade building Istanbul into a global nexus point of travel, trade and influence. State-owned Turkish Airlines began flying to places like Mogadishu to project the country as a unifying force on the international stage. At home, Turkey invested in energy infrastructure to position itself as a vital transit hub linking hydrocarbon-rich areas in the Middle East with Europe.

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