Turkey is seen increasingly in Washington as “running around the region doing things that are at cross-purposes to what the big powers in the region want,” said Steven A. Cook, a scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations. The question being asked, he said, is “How do we keep the Turks in their lane?”…
It is Mr. Erdogan’s confrontation with Israel, which he accused of “state terrorism” in the flotilla raid, that raised the loudest alarms for Americans. Many see his fiery statements as a sign that he has not only abandoned the quest to join the European Union, but is aligning himself with Islamic rivals of the West…
Shafeeq Ghabra, a political science professor at Kuwait University, argued that Turkey had stepped into a vacuum left by a failed peace process, and that it was trying to “save the Palestinians from becoming desperate again and save Israel from itself.”
That may be so, but Mr. Erdogan’s tough talk eliminates Turkey’s place at the table as a moderator with Israel, analysts said, and also boxes in the Obama administration, forcing it into a choice between allies that the Turks are sure to lose.
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