Debating Turkey in the Middle East: The Dawn of a New Geo-Political Imagination

The interest Turkey has generated in the Arab world over the last few years is caused by the convergence of changes in Turkey, the Middle East, and the global power-balance. Turkey’s domestic political process, its new foreign policy, and the EU membership process are closely followed in the larger Muslim world. The new configurations of power in the Middle East and the world at large lead to new types of geopolitical imagination. From Turkish soap operas and import products to Turkey’s involvements in Lebanon and Palestine, Turkey is claiming a new space in the Arab public opinion in a manner never seen before. While AK Party’s ties with the Arab and Muslim world are partly responsible for Turkey’s renewed foreign policy activism in the region, the current debate is also reflective of the failures of the international system and heralds the advent of a new balance of power in Turkey’s immediate neighborhood.