In a visit to London last week, Turkish President Abdullah G\u00fcl declared his country to be a bright spot amid Europe\u2019s gloom: \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be surprising if we start talking about BRIC plus T [for Turkey].\u201d The boast was more symptomatic of Turkey\u2019s geopolitical ambitions than its real economic heft\u2014in cash terms, its GDP is only half of Russia\u2019s, the poorest BRIC nation. Still, it\u2019s clear Turkey wants to box above its weight internationally: G\u00fcl reaffirmed Turkey\u2019s determination to join the EU, and promised support for a NATO missile-defense system aimed at securing the continent against attack from Tehran.<\/p>\n
At the same time that Turkey is making itself attractive to Europe, it has been busy reaching out to Iran, laying the groundwork for new negotiations aimed at defusing Tehran\u2019s nuclear standoff with the West. Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki seems keen to revive talks with the U.S., Europe, Russia, and China: last week he proposed moving the venue for talks from Vienna to Ankara. Now, with the EU mired in debt and the U.S. beset by domestic political woes, Iran may be increasingly confident in standing up to the West, which makes Turkey even more indispensable as a go-between. Turkey might not be a BRIC yet, but it\u2019s well on its way.<\/p>\n
With Christopher Werth<\/p>\n
via Turkey Reaches Out to Both West and Iran – Newsweek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a visit to London last week, Turkish President Abdullah G\u00fcl declared his country to be a bright spot amid Europe\u2019s gloom: \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be surprising if we start talking about BRIC plus T [for Turkey].\u201d The boast was more symptomatic of Turkey\u2019s geopolitical ambitions than its real economic heft\u2014in cash terms, its GDP is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":29652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[4235,4017],"class_list":["post-25945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-bric","tag-bric-of-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}