The European Council on Foreign Relations

Turkish questions over Libya

Date: 22nd March 2011  |  Author: Nicholas Walton,

Categories: Middle East and North Africa, Wider Europe, Security and Defence,
Tags: , podcasts, scorecard, turkey, libya, nato

After the events, the punditry - and, with the international intervention on Libya, there's an awful lot of punditry going around. Some is good, some, as ever, not so much. The first big problem is trying to sift through to try to find the really valuable information among the tonnes of opinion debris. The second is to track down the angles and issues that the punditry machine has so far missed out on.

This morning, Dimitar Bechev (the head of ECFR's Sofia office) led a policy call that looked at the delicate positioning that is going on in Ankara over Libya. The background is complicated - Turkey is a NATO member with close (and frustrated) links to the EU, yet it is developing a strong independent streak and sees itself as a vital regional power and a model for democratic governments in the Muslim world. There was, as you can imagine, a lot to discuss - and it is also an issue that the wider punditry machine outside of Turkey itself has yet to touch upon.

That is why, when I had to record a separate interview with Dimitar*, I grabbed the chance to record a quick podcast looking at the questions facing Turkey over Libya. You can listen to the audio here (or, as ever, subscribe through itunes or podhoster.com). It's only a brief introduction as I can imagine that it is one of those issues that we will return to.

* The separate interview was part of our preparations for the publishing of a major survey on European foreign policy, called the Scorecard - there'll be a full interactive version on the website, complete with podcasts with all the authors. You'll no doubt see more if you visit http://www.ecfr.eu from the 30th of March...

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