Lately, some on the right in Washington have fretted that Turkey's religiously oriented Justice and Development Party, the AKP, will distance the country from its Western allies, eroding secularism as it seeks tighter bonds within the Middle East. After all, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pushed some very sensitive Western buttons: He has dismissed concerns over Iran's nuclear program, for instance, and canceled a military exercise with Israel, holding one with Syria instead.
These moves leave plenty to worry about -- including the possibility that the United States will make things worse by worrying about all the wrong things. But Erdogan's decisions do not augur the rise of an Islamist foreign policy in Turkey. The more troubling reality is that they are the inevitable outcome of long-brewing domestic trends. In limiting cooperation with Israel and improving relations with neighbors like Iran and Syria, Erdogan is playing to Turkish leftists and rightists, secularists and Islamists. He's pandering to voters who already dislike the United States and Israel while cleverly, if cynically, pursuing Turkey's national interests. A good politician from any other party would do the same.
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