WINEP: "Turkey has a harder line on Israel than Saudi Arabia... and that's unfortunate..."

... and Turkey's blackmail continues ....WINEP's , in the WaPo, here

"....Three days before moderate Arab allies of Washington, including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, gathered on Jan. 19 in Kuwait to discuss an end to the Gaza conflict, Erdogan's officials met with Iran, Syria and Sudan in Qatar, effectively upstaging the moderates. Amazingly, Turkey is now taking a harder line on the Arab-Israeli conflict than even Saudi Arabia.... If Turkish foreign policy is based on solidarity with Islamist regimes or causes, Ankara cannot hope to be considered a serious NATO ally. Likewise, if the AKP discriminates against women, forgoes normal relations with Israel, curbs media freedoms or loses interest in joining Europe, it will hardly endear itself to the United States. And if Erdogan's AKP keeps serving a menu of illiberalism at home and religion in foreign policy, Turkey will no longer be special -- and that would be unfortunate."

(Incidentally, Anthony Cordesmann, who has become an apologist for everything Israeli, has this to say on Turkey, in his otherwise useless report on the Gaza war: "...Israelis tended to dismiss such words as driven by the heat of the moment and as atypical of the Turkish military. Prime Minister Egrodan openly clashed with President Shimon Peres at Davos a month later, however, and Israeli need to be far more cautious about the feelings of the Turkish military and secular Turkish analysts and officials. Anyone who visit Turkey finds that they – like many of their Arab counterparts in moderate Arab states -- are often considerably less sympathetic to Israel in private that the official line might indicate....")