(Quotes available: ataturksociety@earthlink.net )
There are many who seem confused about the closer relationship of the primarily Muslim Turkey with Israel and other Western nations including the U.S. This has caused animosity among other Arab nations who view Turkey as some kind of “uncle Tom” of the Muslim world, while it has made other nations view Turkey in an enviable “privileged child” type of situation. As one analyst on the current Argentine economic crisis claimed, “U.S. policies got us into this mess and then the U.S. abandoned Argentina because, unlike Turkey, it is not of geopolitical significance” (Feldstein 1). Sheer nonsense.
There are many valid reasons for the more congenial relationship between Turkey and Israel and other western nations, and, quite frankly, from either end of the pendulum one could view them from either of the perspectives covered above. The truth of the matter is that the modern world is primarily a democratic capitalistic place, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with that, most Muslim nations stubbornly refuse to accept it. Instead they adopt the suicidal notion of choosing to die if it comes to all out war as opposed to adopting the manner and tenor of most of the rest of the entire world. Moral dilemmas of right versus wrong, one religious ideology versus another, and individual autonomy versus good-of-society arguments aside, Turkey, Israel and other western relationships enjoy the relationship they presently do in contrast to most other Muslim nations because of a history of decent acts exchanged among all of three of them despite idiosyncratic differences.
There is no denying that through most of the 20th century the location of Turkey did make it geopolitical in significance to Israel and other western nations. However, its proximity to Russia also made it of quite significant interest to other non-western nations during the WWII and Cold War eras. Ev...