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Article: Dervish: The Invention of Modern Turkey.
- Article from:
- The National Interest
- Article date:
- December 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 The National Interest, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Is the west "losing" Turkey? The question has been prompted by the accession to power in Ankara in June 1996 of a coalition government in which the Islamist Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, or RP) is the senior partner, with its leader, Necmettin Erbakan, the prime minister. Concern in the West increased when in August Turkey agreed to buy $23 billion worth of natural gas from Iran, just as the U.S. administration was intensifying its efforts to ostracize the regime in Tehran.
The fact, too, that Erbakan chose Muslim countries - Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia - for his first foreign trip as prime minister suggested that Turkey might shift orientation from West ...