Thursday’s NATO Summit\u00a0and a series of high level meetings with the EU leaders in Brussels seem to have given President Recep Tayyip Erdogan an incentive to reassess Turkey\u2019s position on a number of key foreign policy issues.<\/p>\n
After months of sailing in stormy waters, seemingly heading for a shipwreck, an opportunity to revive the EU-Turkey\u00a0 dialogue, had been keenly awaited.<\/p>\n
\u201cEyes will be on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s meetings this week with key European leaders on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels\u201d, wrote<\/a> the veteran Turkish commentator, Semih Idiz.<\/p>\n It turned out to be an important new page, but not quite the beginning of a new chapter. Perhaps, much to the Turkish officials\u2019 relief, the spotlight has ended up falling elsewhere.<\/p>\n It was the US President\u2019s first summit with NATO leaders, and the terrorist attack at a concert in Manchester had shifted the focus to two key issues<\/a>: \u201cstepping up NATO\u2019s role in the fight against terrorism, and fairer burden sharing\u201d.<\/p>\n They both happened to be subjects that Turkey has been highlighting in relation to its own major concerns.<\/p>\n The Manchester attack underlined the importance of a coordinated approach in the fight against terrorism. The Financial Times <\/a>\u00a0reported that the suicide bomber had travelled to Britain from Turkey four days before the bombing, once again naming Turkey as a transit point for European militants. The Turkish government responded by repeating its complaint that the Europeans did not share their intelligence information swiftly and sufficiently.<\/p>\n As it turned out, sharing intelligence was not enough. It had to be treated responsibly, too. This time, the finger of blame was pointed at Washington after an embarrassing and highly damaging US security leak<\/a> caused serious tension between the British Prime Minister May and President Trump. Mr. Trump hastily sent his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to London to apologize.<\/p>\n President Trump\u2019s reluctance to acknowledge the \u00a0NATO\u2019s Article 5 Clause, a key principle of the alliance\u2019s collective defence, as well as his inappropriate comments during a commemoration ceremony and his bullying<\/a> posturing during the summit, \u00a0gave everyone plenty to talk about.<\/p>\n As a result, tensions between Turkey and some NATO countries over Ankara\u2019s veto of cooperation with the non-NATO member Austria, and the ongoing dispute over Incirlik with Germany did not attract much media attention.<\/p>\n