Switching sides

Middle East | Turkey's embrace of extremist neighbors signals a new regional calculus | Jill Nelson

Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images

A major shift has taken place in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Turkey, a strategic ally of the West and Israel—and the only Muslim country in the region with a secular government besides fractured Iraq—has effectively signaled that it's leaving its Western friends and reorienting itself eastward.

In January, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed out of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland after accusing Israeli President Shimon Peres of "murdering children on beaches"—a reference to Israel's incursion into Gaza last December.

In early October, Turkey disinvited Israel to Anatolian Eagle—a war games exercise held annually with the United States and NATO. Two days later, Turkey invited Syria to joint military exercises instead. While verbal assaults against Israel are nothing new, October's events mark the first time Ankara's increasingly harsh rhetoric has spilled over into acts of foreign policy, and some analysts fear Turkey may be saying goodbye to the West.