But recent commentary and headlines – particularly in the US – have claimed Turkey is turning its back on the West as the rift between Turkey and Israel deepened following the killing of 9 Turkish citizens by Israeli forces when they raided a Turkish ship trying to run the blockade of Gaza in May.

Turkey is an ally of the US and a staunch member of NATO, it has also been trying to get into the EU for more than twenty years, so why are some commentators saying Ankara is turning away from the West?

A new poll from the German Marshall Fund published  today suggests Turks are cooling in their attitude towards the EU and NATO and are distinctly less concerned about Iran than the public in Turkey’s NATO allies.

And over the past 8 years, under the leadership of the AK Party, which is rooted in political islam, Turkey has changed.

Reuters

In the domestic arena, it has reduced the power and influence of the armed forces which see themselves as the guardians of the secular legacy of the Turkish Republic’s founder Kemal Ataturk.

But AK has also made its mark in foreign policy. It has accelerated Turkey’s negotiations to enter the EU, even if Cypriot blocking tactics and the lack of enthusiasm in France and Germany for Turkish entry have undermined the momentum of those talks.

But Foreign Minister, Professor Ahmet Davutoglu, who is a respected political scientist rather than a career politician, has articulated a clear vision of Turkey’s international role – and it doesn’t involve turning its back on NATO and the EU.

Professor Davutoglu espouses a policy of ‘zero problems with neighbours’, others have called it ‘neo-Ottomanism’, which has seen Ankara reaching out to its neighbours to the north, east and south. This has seen the Turks return to the Middle East as mediators between Israel and Syria and to the Balkans where they have recently tried to ease relations between Serbia and Bosnia. It has also seen booming trade with Russia and Iran.

And it is with Iran that American commentators and, seemingly, the Obama administration, have the most problem with Turkey’s changing foreign policy.

Turkey, along with Brazil, attempted to revive talks over Iran’s nuclear programme in May, when Prime Minister Racep Tayyip Erdogan and President Lula went to Tehran and got President Ahmedinejad to agree to send some nuclear material abroad for reprocessing as a confidence building measure. According to the Brazilians, the initiative was coordinated closely with the US and the Iranians agreed to the three conditions the US had insisted on. But following the announcement of the agreement, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, rejected it out of hand.

Brazil and Turkey were not best pleased and responded by voting against the stronger sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council.

President George W Bush’s response to the September 11th attacks was to tell the world “you’re either with us, or you are with the terrorists”.

Some American commentators’ response to Turkey’s dispute with Israel and attempt to negotiate with Iran, has been reminiscent of this zero-sum approach by arguing  that if Turkey adopts foreign policies the US doesn’t agree with, then it is turning against the West.

Turkey is an emerging power – sometimes bracketed along with the BRIC countries. It’s a member of the G20 with an economy expected to grow more than 5% this year. It sees a new role for itself as a regional power, but it does not seem to see that as being incompatible with remaining a member of NATO and continuing talks to join the EU.

As a senior AK MP, Ozlem Turkone, told the World Tonight’s Paul Moss, in an interview to be broadcast tonight “of course Turkey is still an ally of the West and the US, but the world is no longer a bi-polar world. New regional powers are increasing and Turkey can play as a regional power”

The reaction in government and think-tank circles in Washington to Ankara asserting a more independent foreign policy illustrates the difficulty the US seems to be having adjusting to the changing distribution of power in the world, particularly in the Middle East where it asserts stong national interests of its own.

The World Tonight is broadcast at 22.00 UK time on BBC Radio 4 and online

Michael Pomerleano explains the need for a new institution with the necessary legitimacy to provide global financial stability, arguing that “[n]ational public policies can no longer be independent of global collective-action problems”. Amartya Sen, meanwhile, explores the continuing significance of the 18^th Century ideas of Adam Smith to contemporary global economic troubles.

- Elsewhere, in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, Henry Kissinger offers his views on Obama’s recent nuclear initiatives, US-China relations, and coherence among the BRICs. Over at World Politics Review, Nikolas Gvosdev reports on the lack of support forthcoming among BRIC countries for strict sanctions on Iran and highlights some of the other options open to the US administration in dealing with Tehran. Jonathan Holslag, meanwhile, assesses China’s recent diplomatic “charm offensive”, concluding that this will yield little over the long-term if words aren’t backed up by meaningful action.

- Finally, two television debates and nearly three weeks into the British general election campaign, David Marquand explains why this is “a moment for careful historical reconnaissance”. Assessing the rise of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, he explores comparisons with the three-party politics of Britain in the early 1920s. The FT’s Philip Stephens, meanwhile, assesses the impact of the debates and the implications of a hung parliament for the British electoral system.

- The Cable highlights the Obama administration’s key people on Iran. Richard Haass, meanwhile, suggests that the West’s strategy must do more to help the Iranian people – with the US and EU acting to “energise and lend rhetorical support to the opposition, helping it to communicate with the outside world”.

- Elsewhere, Der Spiegel profiles the five main risks to the Euro – namely Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy – assessing their economic woes. Charlemagne, meanwhile, interviews Cathy Ashton. And The Economist also has news that Dominique Strauss-Khan, current IMF head, is considering running against Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s 2012 presidential elections.

- Finally, this week saw a group of British Academy experts writing to the Queen about the failure to foresee the credit crunch – a follow-up to a question from the monarch at the LSE last summer. Their suggestion: the need for a better-coordinated government horizon scanning capacity – something that could take the form of a monthly economics briefing to the Queen, which would serve – as Professor Peter Hennessy has commented – to “sharpen minds” of officials. Read the full letter here (pdf).

The FT, and the city analysts it has spoken to, are speculating that the move may be in retaliation for US arms sales to Taiwan and Obama’s decision to meet the Dalai Lama.

In other cheery news, Iran is promising the ‘demise’ of the liberal capitalist system. But that’s supposed to be tomorrow.

Some of the organisations on the list are just as you’d expect: the Open Society Institute, Freedom House, or Human Rights Watch.  Most of the big US think tanks are there, too: Brookings, Aspen, the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Enterprise Institute. The New America Foundation’s call for a grand bargain with Iran has pissed them off so much that they put it on the list twice.

But only one UK non-profit organisation has made the cut – step forward and take a bow, Wilton Park!

Full list here.

Standards are soaring at the New York Times. For the self proclaimed  ’newspaper of record rumour’, it seems that news is now “defined as anything juicy that catches our eye on Twitter”.

Hossein Derakhshan - or Hoder as he is often known – has been dubbed the Iranian blogfather. Back in 2001, his efforts to tailor Blogger for a Persian character set were a catalyst for Iran’s ealy uptake of blogging, which outstripped that of any country in the region.

When I helped run a blog at the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003, we were besieged by Iranian bloggers, with Hoder at the forefront. Here’s Aaron Scullion’s account of our confrontation with Ahmad Motamedi, then Iran’s minister for Information and Communication Technology. We repeatedly pressed the Minister on Internet censorship and arrests of bloggers in Iran – all based on Hoder’s work and encouragement.

Hoder visited Israel in 2006 and wrote widely about it, including for the BBC:

For me, an Iranian raised in post-revolutionary Iran, Israel has always had three great qualities: unknown, forbidden and therefore extremely intriguing. That’s why I finally decided to visit Israel.

But unlike all Iranians who have visited Israel, I decided to publicise my visit to the 20,000 daily readers of my blog – even though I knew I would not be able to go back to Iran again.

I had a mission, though, which would make the risk worthwhile. I wanted to break the stereotypical images both governments use to advance their radical policies.

He then made the extraordinary decision to go back to the Iran, appearing to have had some kind of rapprochement with the Iranian regime. In November 2008, however, he was arrested, and has not been heard of since. There’s been no charge and, as far as I know, no news.

Time then, for the NYT to charge into the fray with a claim that Hoder is – and may always have been – a spy for the Iranian secret services:

Suspicion that Iran’s blogging community has been infiltrated by double agents has sown fears and doubt online. For instance, a few days ago Omid Habibinia, an Iranian now blogging from Switzerland, wrote on Twitter about a rumor that a significant figure in Iran’s blogging community is a double agent: “some bloggers [are] saying Hossein Derakhshan (missing since 8 month ago) is working with intelligence agents.”

They have good reasons to make this appalling accusation, you’d think. Er no.

While there is no evidence to support the rumor that Mr. Derakhshan is cooperating with the authorities in their battle against Iran’s opposition bloggers, the Revolutionary Guard does seem to have established what it calls a “cyber army.” Last month a series of updates were posted on Twitter by a blogger who identified himself as a member of the Revolutionary Guard who seemed to be dedicated to finding and helping to arrest opposition protesters and bloggers. Even if Mr. Derakhshan has not defected to the side of Iran’s security forces, it is clear that some Internet-savvy people have taken the fight to suppress the opposition’s protests online.

Now it’s possible that Hoder has agreed to cooperate – perhaps under torture. Maybe, he even did a deal before he went home. Perhaps, too, the Times’ editor, Bill Keller, is still shagging his reporters. Point is we don’t know whether any of these assertions are true.

You have to hand it to the cowardly shits at the Times, though. If you’re going to libel someone, it makes sense to do it when your target is locked away in a jail cell. Then you can publish whatever the hell you like.