The White House meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Bush today provides an important opportunity to revitalize U.S.-Turkish relations, badly frayed by the American-led invasion of Iraq.
A strong partnership with Turkey is very much in the U.S. interest. Turkey is located the nexus of three areas of increasing strategic importance to the United States: Europe, the Caspian/Black Sea region, and the Middle East. In each areas, Turkish cooperation is vital to achieving U.S. interests...
The remainder of this op-ed can be found at washingtontimes.com.
Frank Carlucci is a former defense secretary and national security adviser in the Reagan administration, and a member of the RAND Corp. board of trustees. F. Stephen Larrabee was a member of the Carter administration National Security Council staff and holds the RAND Corporate Chair in European Security.
This commentary originally appeared in Washington Times on June 8, 2005. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.