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One of the countries most jubilant about the AKP’s June 2011 parliamentary victory in Turkey is Iran. After the formal announcement of the polls results, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of first leaders who extended his congratulations to Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Gul. Although relations between Iran and Turkey have been generally peaceful since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey (1923), it has also sometimes been strained and there have been a lot of ups and downs.

Turkey has been a long a strategic ally of the US and Israel in the region, but after the AKP came to power in 2002, its foreign policy has changed dramatically from pure pro-Americanism to regional equilibrium, a shift dubbed Neo-Ottomanism. It means that hereinafter, Turkey does not follow the US or the West completely; it follows what they see as their newly-defined national interests, in which sympathy to the Islamic world is one of the pillars of their new foreign policy. Hence, Turkey’s harsh position against the Israeli massacre against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip from December 2008 to January 2009 and the Israeli attack against the humanitarian aid flotilla, during which nine Turkish citizens were killed. Its stance showed the real essence of Turkey’s foreign policy.

Of course, Turkey is going to show as a modern secular ... >>>