Turkey’s Foreign Policy Priorities are Shifting

Source:https://nationalinterest.org/feature/turkeys-foreign-policy-priorities-are-shifting-43832 Date:08Feb2019

For these reasons, in many Arab countries, including Morocco, Muslim Brotherhood intellectuals consider Turkey the a priori favorable. This is a weapon that Erdogan will not let go, despite Western pressure, because it gives the Turkish leader enormous grassroots power across North Africa and Near East.

While nominally a NATO ally of the United States, Turkey has definitely turned its back on membership of the European Union and American foreign-policy objectives. It sees its future as being the regional power player. For this she has to deal with the superpowers, but also with Iran and its Shiite crescent, and the Gulf monarchies and Wahhabi Islam. In this configuration, the cultural and ideological usefulness of the Brotherhood for Turkish goals is the decisive factor. Without the Brotherhood to magnify its power, Turkey cannot be a regional powerbroker. Therefore, it is very difficult to imagine that Ankara abandons an influential movement in the region for seventy years. It would lose much and gain nothing.

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