Turkey, posing itself as the rising regional superpower and the new leader of the vast Middle East flexed its muscles this week by taking bold and largely unexpected initiative to launch air raids on the positions of Islamic State militants in neighboring Syria and the targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Iraq, banned in Turkey and labeled by Ankara as “terrorist organization”.
The only NATO member-state with strong links to the Islamic world Turkey has won the unequivocal support from the 28 member-state alliance at their emergency meeting in Brussels, which endorsed Ankara’s move as a part of the global war on terror. However, while some praise Turkey for showing no mercy to terrorists, others argue that apart from war on terrorism President Erdogan can be driven by carefully-veiled domestic political considerations aimed at sidelining mainstream Kurdish political forces which formed the fourth largest faction in Turkish parliament.
Evgeny Satanovsky, head of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies in Moscow (studio guest), Hasan Selim Ozertem, researcher at Ankara based think tank International Strategic Research Organization and Dr. Mehmet Yegin, head of Ankara-based USAK Center for American Studies joined us to express their views.
