Turkey faces new threats which must be confronted

Prime Minister Erdoğan is so embroiled in domestic squabbling that he appears not to be aware of what is going on around Turkey, let alone the rest of the world. All of his expectations in Syria are in tatters. He also failed to comprehend the situation in Egypt in the lead-up to last year’s military coup.
 
Despite some friendly overtures last year, Ankara continues to have strained relations with Baghdad. The latest developments in Iraq’s Nineveh Province, and particularly the regional capital of Mosul, have also caught Ankara off guard. 

Erdoğan says the results of the March 30 local elections are also an endorsement of his government’s foreign policy, but one has to be truly gullible to see much success for the government in that area.
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was claiming a few years ago that a leaf could not move in the Middle East without Turkey’s consent. Today there are forest fires raging there and all Ankara can do is look on.  

The advances being made in Iraq and parts of northern Syria by The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) show Turkey’s new neighbors could very well be a band of head-cutting Islamic fundamentalists soon. This was obviously not what Ankara expected when it developed what clearly appears now to be overambitious and misguided regional policies based on barely veiled sectarian preferences.

Davutoğlu is reportedly on the phone around the clock to his counterparts in Arbil, Baghdad, Tehran, and Washington to discuss developments in Mosul and is no doubt considering options with them. What is apparent at this stage, however, is that there is no diplomacy that can be conducted with ISIL or any of its affiliates in Iraq or Syria.

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