The Rumi Forum presented "What does Turkey mean to the West now?" with Joshua W. Walker and Juliette Tolay.

Synopsis: The recent activism and assertiveness of Turkish foreign policy has caused political waves throughout Europe, the United States, and in Turkey’s immediate neighborhood, particularly after the Flotilla incident with Israel and the UN Security Council vote on Iran sanctions. Turkey is now a more autonomous actor pursuing greater regional and global influence. For the Transatlantic community this could make it either a valuable asset or an uncertain partner. Most prominently in the West, there are fears that Turkey is being “lost” and that it is becoming more oriented toward Russia or the Middle East, and that it is drifting away from secularism and toward Islamism at home. Given the critical importance of Turkey politically and its strategic position geographically, it is important for Europe and the US to understand Ankara’s aims and actions on their own terms especially with respect to its immediate neighborhood. This presentation, based on a report on Turkish foreign policy“Getting to Zero: Turkey, its Neighbors, and the West,”focuses on key parts of that neighborhood, i.e., the Middle East and the Black Sea and key policy areas, such as economy, energy, democracy promotion and migration.

Joshua W. Walker is currently a fellow at the Transatlantic Academy based in Washington, DC and will be joining Brandeis University as a postdoctoral fellow and Harvard University as a research fellow next year. He will subsequently join the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies as an Assistant Professor in International and Cross-Cultural Leadership Studies in 2011. Joshua is a doctoral candidate in Politics and Public Policy at Princeton University scheduled for his dissertation defense in early September and where his work focuses on international relations and security studies. Walker is a fellow of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a former fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a graduate fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination and Bradley Foundation. He is the co-founder of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy, and International Relations at Princeton and the Young Professions in Foreign Policy in New York. He holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from Yale University and a Bachelors from the University of Richmond. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Ankara, Turkey and worked for the US Embassy and State Department on Turkey.

Juliette Tolay is a fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, based in Washington DC, where she conducts research on Turkish foreign policy. She is also completing her Ph.D in political science and international relations at the University of Delaware. Her dissertation looks at Turkish approaches to immigration, and studies the historical and cultural sources of these complex attitudes and policies. A French national, Juliette has also studied at Sciences Po in Paris, from which she has received a B.A and M.A, as well as at INALCO, where she received an M.A in Turkish studies. She has studied or conducted research in Turkey, Tajikistan and Iran. She has authored a number of papers and a book chapter on migration flows in the Middle East and North Africa. Juliette is the 2010 recipient of the first prize of the Sakip Sabanci International Research Award for a paper on multiculturalism in Turkey.