The European Council on Foreign Relations

Turkey, Libya and unintended consequences

Date: 24th March 2011  |  Author: Nicholas Walton,

Categories: Europe and the world, Middle East and North Africa,

A couple of days ago I recorded an audio podcast with Dimitar Bechev (here's the podcast; here's the blog post) looking at Ankara's delicate positioning over international intervention in Libya.

I've just been reading a piece in Today's Zaman by Gülnur Aybet (a friend of ECFR's) that contributes significantly to the debate - the piece (in English) is here and well worth reading. Dr Aybet argues that the Libyan intervention will probably be remembered as ambivalent and reluctant, despite wide international backing, largely because of the recent historical reverberations from Iraq. This ambivalence and reluctance has affected many of the actors, from the Arab League to the US, but is especially keenly felt in Turkey.

Turkey is of course a curious case - a member of NATO, frustrated with (and humiliated by) the tortuous accession process into the EU, yet carving out its own niche as

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