Obama's link to the Muslim world: Turkey

Turkey's two AKP governments have maintained good ties with Europe and with all Turkey's neighbors – including Greece, Iran, Georgia, Iraq, and Syria. In 2007-08, Ankara also undertook an important mediation effort between Israel and Syria.

But Ankara fell afoul of the Bush administration in Washington for a number of reasons. Most significantly, in 2003, Ankara – like many other NATO allies – strongly opposed the US invasion of Iraq, and it refused to allow Washington to launch part of the invasion from Turkey.

The Bush administration also objected to the good ties the AKP maintained with Syria and – after the hard-line faction won the Palestinian elections in 2006 – with Hamas.

While George W. Bush was president, he seemed to ascribe little value to the inclusive and generally de-escalatory policies the AKP government has pursued at home and in the broader Middle East. He preferred instead an approach to the Middle East that sharpened divisions between the two groups he defined as "moderates" and "extremists."

In the former group were the notoriously anti-democratic governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In the latter, any government or party that seemed to support Iran, regardless of whether – like Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah – they might have proved their popular support in democratic elections.

Indeed, in the Bush years, Washington worked actively to overthrow both Hamas and Hezbollah, and maintained what one Bush White House official has described as "a state of quasi-war" with Syria.

Several Bush-era officials openly questioned whether the electoral victories of Hamas and Hezbollah actually "proved" that a party could be both dedicated to Islamist principles and democratic rule over the longer term. Turkey's experience provides intriguing evidence that it can.

Obama should value Turkey's views on regional affairs. He may not be ready yet to go along with all the advice he receives from the AKP government in Ankara. But Ankara has much valuable experience that it can share with its NATO ally.

Helena Cobban is a former Monitor correspondent. Her latest book is "Re-engage! America and the World after Bush."

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