Turkey is not a bridge and I think we should forget using this rhetoric. We should drop this rhetoric from Turkish foreign policy. We are a kind of melting pot, a hub, a political, cultural, strategic hub, whatever you would like to call it. A center where people can meet together, talk together, and where they can interact together.
During the Cold War, Turkey turned its back and ignored the Middle East, said Prof. Mustafa Aydın in an interview with the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review, adding that since former Prime Minister Turgut Özal’s administration, Turkey has shown more attention to its surrounding regions.
Aydın’s list of accolades and accomplishments is one of the longest to be found on the Internet. He’s written books and articles, given lectures and served on the boards of prestigious international organizations. At present he is the chairman of the department of international relations at the Union of Turkish Chambers of Commerce and Commodity Exchanges, or TOBB, University in Ankara. He spoke with the Daily News during the second Symposium of the International Centre for Black Sea Studies on Kalymnos in the Dodecanese Islands of Greece.
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(Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review, 12.07.2009)