All Policy Analysis by Soner Cagaptay

The authors contend that the primary motive behind the AKP's stance toward the Arab regimes is not money, but rather the desire to show solidarity with certain anti-American regimes and distaste for pro-American ones.

Strong U.S.-Turkish relations are not to be taken for granted, at least while the Justice and Development Party (AKP) remains in power. So, how is the U.S. to meet the dual challenge of the AKP's increasingly ideological foreign policy agenda and parallel Turkish anti-Americanism?

While the Turkish Justice and Development Party's (AKP's) record on democracy and foreign policy is less than perfectly in accord with European or U.S. preferences, the Turkish opposition has often appeared even worse, given its chauvinistic nationalism, shortsightedness, and anti-Western views. Signs indicate, however, that this dynamic is changing. Since

On March 28, 2010, Robert Satloff, Osman Koruturk, and Soner Cagaptay addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute to discuss the foreign policy views of Turkey's main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP). Dr. Satloff is the Institute's executive director. Ambassador Koruturk is the CHP's vice

The lesson of the AKP experience for the Arab world and likely Muslim Brotherhood governments is that religious orthodoxy is an ideological beauty contest, in which the winner is always the ugly guy.

Using its unbridled control over the executive, legislative, and now judicial branches and the media, the AKP has eliminated Kemalists, and now aims to shape Turkish society in its own narrowly conservative and authoritarian image.

In the absence of a free media in Turkey, the platform offered by the foreign media may become the only one in which the AKP's voice of disagreement with the U.S. can be heard.

MEMO To: The Muslim Brotherhood From: A Fellow Muslim Dear Brother, As you prepare to run in Egypt's first free elections -- Inshallah, you will win -- I am writing to make recommendations for your success, drawing from the Turkish model. Do not get me wrong; I am not referring

Late last month, two diplomatic rows erupted when French president Nicolas Sarkozy visited Turkey and Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Germany. Sarkozy had an unfriendly welcome in Ankara, including a deliberately unflattering photo that showed Erdogan towering over him during a handshake. And during a speech in Dusseldorf

With coup allegations, the arrest of the government's opponents, and an ongoing media crackdown, an independent media is crucial to Turkey's democracy.

Have doubts that Turkey has changed since the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, assumed power in 2002? A look at what arouses popular anger in Turkey today reveals a society in flux -- one rapidly adopting new and risky political sensitivities. In the past, actions considered offensive to Turkish

One of the unexpected consequences of recent Arab unrest in the Middle East is Turkey's elevation into a potential regional power.

Egypt's transition toward a post-Hosni Mubarak era, as incremental and painful as it might be, has sparked interest in the "Turkish model" of democracy-craft, i.e. the art of conducting democratic affairs, which in Turkey involves the military playing a stabilizing role during the transition process while Islamist parties moderate through

Though unique in many ways, Malaysia suggests lessons for Turkey's future: an increasingly ideologically oriented foreign policy enacted in tandem with a similarly informed social agenda can result in an illiberal and non-Western society, despite its economic modernity.

Although the AKP's Iran policy is guided by a core ideological stance, Iran's Turkey policy is at core shaped by national interests.

As Turkey approaches elections in June 2011, a consolidation of political parties appears to be in the making, under the auspices of the governing Justice and Development Party, or AKP.