On September 5, 2006 the Turkish parliament voted 340 to 192, along strictly partisan lines, in favor of sending troops to Lebanon to join the UNIFIL contingent beefed up by UN Security Council Resolution 1701. The Justice and Development Party government defied overwhelming public opposition and risked alienating its own base by taking a distinctly unpopular position. …
In his defense of the government’s policy in the parliament, Foreign Minister Gul also intimated that broader strategic considerations guided government thinking. "In short," he stated, "the Lebanese crisis fully exposed Turkey’s strategic position where East and West meet and clearly highlighted the Mediterranean dimension of our identity…
Therein lies the true significance of the Turkish decision. The Lebanon war can only be appreciated in the broader context of regional balance of power, where it is related to the American-Iranian struggle to shape the region and define Iran’s role in it. …
This choice also reflects Turkey’s newfound commonality of interests with the established Arab states. Concerned with the growing influence of Shi’ite Iran, the Sunni Arab states are determined to contain Tehran’s hegemonic aspirations. … In these efforts to contain Iran, Turkey is considered an important ally. It is as part of this quest to forge alliances to balance Iran and to limit the effects of the Shi’ite ascendance that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia recently visited Turkey, the first visit of its kind in 40 years…
In these efforts Turkey, which enjoys good and open relations with all the parties to a multitude of very messy problems, can obviously play an important and constructive role. This appears to be both the calculation and the aspiration of the government. Access the full article>>