Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

October 17, 2017

Tensions between the U.S. and Turkey Involve Far More than Erdogan’s Behavior

An alliance that has lost its purpose.

Last week a diplomatic crisis came to a head as the Turkish government revoked the credentials of the American ambassador. Most observers have attributed the spat to the deterioration of once-friendly relations between the two countries as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has moved his country in an undemocratic, pro-Islamist, and anti-Western direction. Yet Steven A. Cook argues that the friction ultimately stems from the fundamental divergence of American and Turkish interests as, with the end of the cold war, the two countries lost the shared antagonism to the Soviet Union that had long held them together:

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