Another Look at Turkey

If your education about Turkey comes mainly from the MSM, you're not educated.

...Erdogan fears a vast regional war between Sunnis and Shia Muslims, egged on by the West and by the same Arab states that bankroll Al Qaeda, and the Israelis. Sunni Turkey has a large minority of Alawites who are Shia co-religionists to the Syrian regime. It also has anti-Turkish problems with foreign Sunni Kurds. It aspires to closer integration with Europe, remains the toughest army in NATO and its most reliable partner, and it tends overwhelmingly to support America. Moreover, ignoring the bigots from Tennessee to Tel-Aviv who say that all Muslims are equally backward and vicious, the recently urbanised Turks who crave more social conservatism are not our enemies: many, it seems from my visits, are too busy buying Western-made machines and trying to export furniture and dried fruit to America and Europe.

It is a difficult set of problems for Turkey, and there are no sure answers except that the Western media effluvia and daily warnings-cum-“helpful thoughts” from the White House do no good....

As usual, Obozo is not really promoting US interests.

There's a lot more in that essay.  Read it.