Dankwart A. Rustow

Nineteen eighty-four was a year of realignment throughout the Middle East, a year not of the soldier, but of the diplomat and the politician. The war in Lebanon abated; the war in the Persian Gulf sputtered along without clear outcome or design. Syrian's renewed ascendancy in Lebanon and the continuing threat to the whole region from Iran's militancy contributed to an intense round of diplomatic maneuver among moderate Arab countries, notably Egypt and Jordan. The United States, extricated from its Lebanese misadventure, helped to limit the Gulf war and provided military support to friendly countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Soviet Union, taking stock of a series of substantial setbacks in the region since 1979, and finding Syria and Libya to be less than reliable partners, was striving to extend its diplomatic influence among those same Arab moderates, either directly or through its only faithful protégé, South Yemen.

No nation that has maintained close relations with the United States for the last generation is so little understood by well-informed Americans as is Turkey. Even West Europeans, from their closer vantage point, are rarely better informed. In part, this lack of understanding may be due simply to limited contact. There is in the United States no sizable Turkish-American community, hence no ready Turkish constituency in American public opinion. In Western Europe, Turks are present in large numbers--but as guest workers living with their families, apart and unassimilated in the more crowded parts of the cities, and eager to save enough of their wages for the ultimate return home to Turkey.