TURKEY FACES BOTH WAYS
'ISLAMIC STATE' TURKEY AND THE WEST: DOUBLE DEALING AS A STRATEGY TURKEY'S TWO FACED POLICIES ON IS On twentieth of September this year, as the same time as IS was holding journalists and aid workers, ready to be dressed in garish orange jumpsuits and beheaded in front of well-placed TV cameras, 47 Turkish hostages were released unharmed, well dressed and obviously reasonably well cared for. This, seemingly without a quid pro quo from the Turkish Government, is not normal IS modus operandi and understandably it raised some eyebrows. Some might even think shady business had gone on. No, was the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan's response to western cynics, the release was the product of the ingenious work of Turkey’s intelligence services. Some eyebrows however remained raised. Turkey sits famously between three worlds, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The European dimension to Turkey has always been important both inside and outside Turkey, whe...