I’m sitting at the Ciragan Palace’s glass-filled halls on the banks of the Bosporus. I have joined the UN Security Council’s annual retreat, organised by the Turkish government, to give my view on what the UN did right and wrong in the Balkans from the break-up of Yugoslavia.
The retreat is meant to continue the Council’s discussion on the overlap between peacekeeping, peacemaking and peace-building. No immediate action will follow the retreat, but the discussion may lead into a more concrete phase during Turkey’s presidency in September.
Being here in Istanbul, however, has given me a chance to find an answer to the debate that has sprung up about Turkish government: is it really moving away from the West, like The Spectator argued a few issues ago, or is it merely trying to find its place in the post-Cold War world, as Philip Stevens wrote in the Financial Times?
I admit that I have for a long time I believed in the latter.
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