Here’s a fun international compare/contrast

TURKEY: After Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stormed out of a panel discussion on Gaza held in Davos, Switzerland last week, a flurry of articles and speculation over the future of Turkey’s relations with the West have peppered our news. The most famous was Soner Çağaptay’s “Turkey’s Turn from the West” in the Washington Post. The op-ed garnered a lot of attention since Mr. Çağaptay is one of the most prolific Western scholars on US-Turkey relations. However, the people in Turkey see it a bit differently.

In a piece for Today’s Zaman, Mehmet Kalyoncu responded with a more local perspective, saying many of the opinions expressed in the Post op-ed were claims against the current Justice and Development party, a more conservative party. Kalyoncu, also points out what he sees as a pro-Israel agenda behind the discussion of Turkey.

Better yet, one should pay even more attention to what he says, if, as the rumor goes, it appears in The Washington Post, except for that it is the newspaper of columnist David Ignatius, the very man who allegedly caused the infamous scandal at the Davos panel on Gaza.

Soner Çağaptay’s op-ed piece in The Washington Post seems more like a hastily-written diatribe against the AK Party government produced in retaliation for Israeli President Peres’ humiliation at the Davos panel
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Article from Washington Post: Turkey’s Turn from the West

Response from Today’s Zaman: Turkey’s turn from the West or yet another smear campaign?