All Policy Analysis by Soner Cagaptay

What made Ankara do an about-face and re-embrace the West? Recognition of what gives it power in the Middle East.

Turkey's Syria policy seems to be mirroring its Libya strategy: speaking out against a tyrant, gathering international support for political action against him, but staying in the background when it comes to military action.

The sooner the international community helps end the killing in Syria, the more likely it will be able to prevent radicalization of the country's population along sectarian lines.

For the moment, at least, the notion that Turkey will become a full EU member state is no longer true.

Turkish-Iranian rivalry in the Fertile Crescent has opened up a can of worms.

"Protest technology" has changed the relationship between authoritarian regimes and their citizens, and there is no going back.

Washington needs to devise a well-planned, delicate intervention in Syria: one supported by Russia, executed by Turks and Arabs, and remotely backed by the United States and its European allies.

Humanitarian safe havens can protect vulnerable civilians only if backed up with sufficient power.

The question now in Syria is not if al-Assad will fall, but how.

After a decade of discord with the United States, Turkey's ties with Washington improved significantly during 2011.

Turkey, which has experienced phenomenal economic growth over the past decade, no longer feels content to subsume itself under Europe.