Maggie's Farm

Two weeks ago, my friend Gerald Robbins -- Turkey expert and Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute -- brought us his quick analysis of the results of the election in Turkey. FPRI asked him to enlarge upon it for FPRI's readers. There's much more interesting detail and discussion of prospects and difficulties for Turkey. 

A fascinating addition is Robbins' raising the possibility of "a bold, controversial move" to resolve the "long-festering" and violent Kurd rebellion. "If Mr. Erdogan can skillfully manage the process, he’ll be remembered as the person who settled the Kurdish issue, Turkey’s most burdensome problem." That may, also, help him recover from his proven "inane" regional policy of a bridge among the Arab and Iranian Moslems that has come a cropper as evident with his "badly miscalculated" dealings with Syria. Erdogan would be seen more as a venturesome uniter rather than an opportunistic dreamer of semi-Ottoman fantasies.

Read it all.