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no bull and the aftermath.

You suddenly had when Erdogan came to power a much stronger and more economically vibrant

Turkey that could imagine bigger horizons, that could imagine instead of having to hold

on to what it had, you could imagine really reshaping the region in its image.

And I think part of the problem is that that temptation got away from Erdogan, that with

the grandiose historical rhetoric, with the disdain for the West, with the conviction that

the West was in decline and you're entering a more multi-polar world.

In the Arab Spring, some of the upheaval that was taking place in the Middle East all

came together to enable Erdogan to refashion his history, refashion this longstanding desire

for national greatness in a way that suddenly came up against NATO, came up against the West

and put Turkey in conflict with the very actors that I would argue helped bring it to the

place that it is today.

I'm Scott Aranterson and this is the LawFair podcast for April 30th, 2021.

When President Biden entered office, he inherited a bilateral relationship with Turkey that

was strained to the limits by the growing independence streak in that country's foreign

policy, and one that had been pushed in unfamiliar directions by his predecessors direct

and often unpredictable personal relationship with Turkey's longstanding president, Recep

Tayyip Erdogan.

...