Mavi Boncuk |THE NEW DAVUTOGLU: THE NEXT PRIME MINISTER'S GAME PLAN
By Soner Cagaptay
Foreign Affairs
September 1, 2014
Davutoglu's long track record of Ottoman revivalism has exposed Turkey to dangerous regional threats, and defusing them will likely preoccupy him in his new post.
Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's new prime minister, started his career as a professor of international relations in the 1990s. By 2003, he had worked his way into becoming an influential -- yet still relatively unknown -- advisor to Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul. When I met him in his small office in an old government building in downtown Ankara in 2005, he struck me as a scholar with deep knowledge of Ottoman history and a strong desire to transform Turkey into a regional powerhouse. If handed power, it seemed, Davutoglu would turn Turkey's traditional Western-oriented and inward-looking foreign policy upside down. Eventually, as advisor to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey at the time, and then as foreign minister, Davutoglu did exactly that. Now, as prime minister, he will need to figure out how to contain the damaging effects of his policies.
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