Turkey has chosen a perfect time to turn East in strengthening its ties and has already stamped its authority loud and clear in the Middle East where it has been met with open arms.

Almost all Arabs are disgusted with its morally corrupt leaders, Egypt once recognized as the heart of the Arab world has sunk to such depths that it allies Israel in the most inhumane treatment of the Palestinians of Gaza by closing its border and helping Israel to strangle the very life out of what today has become a concentration camp.

Saudi Arabia the guardian of Mecca, the center for all Muslims has recently concluded an agreement with Israel to open its airspace to facilitate an air assault by Israel on a fellow Muslim state, Iran.

Israel has demonstrated in the Gaza War its concern for Muslim lives as it killed 1,400 predominately civilians and 30% children and razed this small defenseless entity to the ground how many more Muslims will die as a result of this agreement.

As for the EU this puny USA puppet has shown its outright racism of Muslims as three countries France, Belgium and Spain have the temerity to legislate what a woman may or may not wear. Imagine for a second if the offending garment had been a yarmulke (the skull cap worn by some religious Jews)there would have been an international incident and the usual scream of anti-Semites but against Muslims not a whisper.

The Middle East is in desperate need of moral leadership and it looks like it has finally found one that it can feel proud of which does not cower to the USA and the EU both which have surpassed their use by date since President Bush declared a crusade against all Muslims and left the Predency with the USA mortgaged to China.

This isn’t simple racism as Muslims can be found in every corner of the globe it is much worse it is cultural racism a phenomenon last seen inflicted against the Jews for two thousand years by their new friends but not by the Muslims.

And for this the USA goverment and EU administration have none to blame but themselves for losing Turkey. The USA kept compromising Turkish interests at the drop of a hat, even in directions of policy that surely would not work and would have little support outside (Iran sanctions), and basing their continued pro-west stance entirely on whether the EU countries personally felt like sacrificing themselves to America's benefit by taking it in (making both Turkey and Europe its enemy).

The EU institution itself is a failure- poorly conceived conditions of entry that ensured pressure on Turkey would be to DE-Secularize- making the EU a non-option and negative party for secular Turks, whilst simultaneously encouraging the country to shift towards Islamism and guaranteed antithesis to the European population if let in (hence the governments opposing it). By offering membership without even thinking about this problem, the EU shot itself in the foot and made an enemy of Turkey AND the EU's own people.

Of course, Turkey was always destined to fall into a gradual Islamist, anti-West shift (against Ataturk's efforts to the opposite)- there was no way the annexed communities on the deep Middle-East side would ever go moderate, and it was they that made up the voting majority that helped Erdogan into power (and the EU putting pressure on the secularist institutions to disband).

All in all, it's the country's right to go whichever way it wants, although I can't exactly say this is a success story for the majority secular turks on the West side, who really should have been a separate country, as the wills of the two communities are totally incompatible with each other, AND the parts of the world the other would prefer to interract with (and chances are, the Western side would have been let into the EU back in the 60s, easily, while the other side would have been less likely so hostile to secularism, even if they still decided not to try it).

Any alliance which loosens America's stranglehold on the M.E. is to be welcomed. America and Israel should both 'piss off' from the M.E. and allow those who live there to forge their own destiny.

Of course, America is building an Empire (have you noticed?) and its military bases are spread across the world. Given America's lack of values, its greed, and its penchant for warmongering, who would want to live in a world run by the U.S.?

Not me!

In interesting point David G:
What strikes me most about the US foreign relations is they too quickly resort to trying to sabotage or offload their problems onto other countries at the drop of a hat when in most situations they really don't have to.

However, the Middle East going off on its own destiny is perfectly fine for me too- I'd only hope that Lebannon, Armenia and West Turkey are given a say whether they want to be a part of it.

Welcome though Turkey's move away from the USA/Israel alliance may be, you must admit it has a lot of catching up to do. With 60 years of USA protection and aid under its belt, together with its own military equipment building efforts, Israel has developed into a formidable threat to peace everywhere, firmly entrenched in the middle east. It will take far more than Turkey alone can achieve to transform Israel into a respected and welcome neighbour.

So Turkey is going the Islamic route, and splitting from the EU and the US.

They are kidding themselves if they think it is not going to drastically affect their economy.