ABSTRACT
S oon after the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the USSR, Turkey’s potential role in the transformed environment of Central Asia, Transcaucasia and the Balkans began to attract the attention of Western journalists, diplomats and scholars. Turkey, it was often pointed out, was the strongest state in the region, it had a fast-growing market economy and a reasonably stable and democratic political system. It was also a long-standing ally of the West. Moreover, Turkish interests, particularly in the predominantly Muslim republics of the former USSR, converged with those of the Western powers, in that both sought to promote political and economic liberalization, to present a more moderate form of Islam, and to prevent the incursion of fundamentalist Islam, assumed to be sponsored by Iran. As a Muslim nation, with strong linguistic and other cultural links with most of the peoples of the region, Turkey, it was further argued, could serve as their bridge to the West, and a successful example of what it was hoped the new republics would become. 1
