In the News: Barkey analyzes Turkey’s silent crisis

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, Henri Barkey, the Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Professor of International Relations, warns: “Turkey is slowly and inexorably moving toward a crisis point.”

Barkey, who worked as a policy advisor in the U.S. State Department from 1998-2000 and co-authored the book Turkey's Kurdish Question with Graham E. Fuller, reports that on a recent trip to Turkey, he found that “the Kurdish issue reverberates far beyond the traditional Kurdish strongholds in Turkey's southeast and eastern regions, increasing the chance that violence could erupt anywhere, at any time.

“The United States, preoccupied with Turkey's unhelpful role in resolving the nuclear impasse with Iran and its war of words with Israel, has been oblivious to this brewing crisis,” Barkey writes. “But these developments are in some ways far more consequential to U.S. interests in the region and in Turkey itself, a critical NATO member.”

Read: Turkey’s Silent Crisis.