Dov Friedman

Turkish foreign policy under the AK Party government has long drawn scrutiny from a wide range of analysts. The Syrian uprising has raised the intensity, variance, and rapid change of such analysis. Though the events in Syria have forced a recalibration of Turkish foreign policy, this change can be better understood with attention to the history of the AK Party’s foreign policy. That history is rooted in a tradition of both continuity and change vis-à-vis the AK Party’s political Islamist predecessors, the Refah and Fazilet parties. By understanding the values, motivations, failures, and lessons of the AK Party’s political forebears, we may better understand the last decade of the AK Party’s foreign policy—and its continuing evolution.

One might be forgiven for presuming that a new book called The Contradictions of Israeli Citizenship would present innovative insights about the place of Palestinian Israelis—and their stateless West Bank-dwelling brethren—in modern Israeli society.