ABSTRACT
The reassertion of Turkey's importance in terms of Middle Eastern rather than European security, in particular, will challenge established images of Turkey's role in Washington, Brussels, and Ankara. With the revolutionary developments in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and the transformation of East-West relations, many observers in Turkey and the West anticipated that Turkey would be a leading casualty of strategic neglect after the Cold War. The notion of Turkey as a bridge between East and West is a pervasive theme among the political and economic elite in Turkey and sympathetic observers elsewhere. Modern Turkey is very much a product of both Eastern and Western influences. The pursuit of regional cooperation initiatives has emerged as an important foreign policy trend across southern Europe. Turkey has made a substantial contribution to this trend through its Black Sea Economic Cooperation Project, aimed at the gradual establishment of a free trade zone among the states surrounding the Black Sea.
