Turkey: The Rising Regional Power

Can Turkey Be an Equal Partner to the US?

By Hany Ramadan Staff Writer — IslamOnline.net

Obama visited Turkey's most well-known mosques. (Reuters photo) Turkey has recently surfaced as a powerful player on the regional and international stage. The Turkish role is now considered by many political experts as one of much increasing significance for both its neighboring countries and some heated parts of the world. Analysts attribute that broad scope of relations to the country's well-established foreign policy and its commendable ties with almost all sides. Turkey is now the only Muslim-member country in the NATO, with the second largest number of deployed troops after the US. Based upon realist approaches, Turkey's ambitious foreign policy has engaged in several regional and international heated issues. It has engaged, for example, with Palestine's Fatah-Hamas conflict, Pakistan-Afghanistan troubled relations, and Iraq's sectarian violence . It has also managed to become a strategic partner to the African Union. To explore Turkey's rising profile in detail and the credentials the country has for a mounting role, IOL Politics in Depth has interviewed the Turkish political expert Abdulhamit Bilici, a Turkish columnist and General Manger of Cihan, one of Turkey's largest news Agencies.More here