TURKEY...... EMERGING POWER
Since the GAZA flotilla fiasco last year, relations between TURKEY and ISRAEL have become rather chilly. Tensions between the two countries deteriorated after TURKEY expelled Israel’s ambassador.
Triggering the move by TURKEY was the release of the UN report on the GAZA Flotilla incident which stipulated that ISRAEL’S actions were legitimate.
Looking closer at the current rift between TURKEY and ISRAEL, it becomes clear that TURKEY among the GAZA Flotilla incident more prominent reasons for the current “warmongering” with ISRAEL.
By distancing itself from the Jewish State it has more bargaining power among fellow Muslim countries, which eases its expansionism strategy towards the East. Assertive TURKEY over the past couple of years has been steadily increasing its influence in the BALKANS, thanks to aimless and indifferent EU strategies in the region and focuses intensely towards the East.
Furthermore TURKEY wittily uses its economic growth to strategically invest in regions which could benefit the country. Thus it becomes imminent that TURKEY is rather annoyed about ISRAEL which has joined forces with TURKEYS arch enemies, CYPRUS and GREECE to extract gas from a 350,000 hectares gas deposits found on the border of CYPRUS’S and ISRAEL’S economic zone in the eastern Mediterranean.
TURKEY claims that hydrocarbon resources also belong to Northern CYPRUS, which has been under TURKISH occupations since 1974. According to TURKEY, CYPRUS has no right to exploit resources belonging to TURKISH CYPRIOTS and therefore threatened to intervene, for clearly the “joint venture” between ISRAEL, GREECE and CYPRUS is a hindering stone in TURKEY’S expansionism ambitions, both economically and politically. As for CYPRUS and GREECE, cooperating with ISRAEL provides a prosperous opportunity to counteract the realignment of regional powers which are currently taking place in the Middle East, with an increasingly assertive TURKEY.
The expelling of ISRAEL’S ambassador also comes precisely in September, the month in which the United Nations referendum on the recognition of a PALESTINE ARAB STATE is due for debate, an issue which is of vital interest to TURKEY and its self-imposed role as moderate Islamic power broker in the region and its stance on IRAN.
Thus a seismic shift in the region is currently underway, where new political cards are currently being reshuffled, leaving TURKEY and SAUDI ARABIA (both Sunni dominated countries) and the USA on the one side, GREECE, ISRAEL, RUSSIA and to some extend CHINA on the other side.
Map from Wikipedia Commons
Green: Sunni
Blue: Shiite
Green: Sunni
Blue: Shiite
See also:
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