Winning Turkey: How America, Europe, and Turkey Can Revive a Fading Partnership

Through a historical account of the dynamics and cleavages of Turkish politics, Gordon and Taspinar provide a policy-oriented analysis of the current status of Turkey's relations with the United States and the European Union and also offer a list of recommendations to revive these relations. Gordon and Taspinar suggest that this fading of Turkey's partnership with the West is due less to the policies of the AKP government than to those of the European Union and the United States regarding Turkey's E.U. membership, the Cyprus issue, the Kurdish question, the Armenian issue, and the Iraq war, which have largely been perceived by the Turkish public as instances of "Western double standards." [...]the authors appear to interpret the AKP government's attempt to lift the ban on headscarves for university students--which the U.S. State Department's Human Rights Report considers a violation of human rights--as an inflammatory move that increases the "tension" between the staunchly secularist establishment and the Islamic-oriented majority.