Can Turkey really be a political model for its region?

From the outset of the ‘Arab Spring’, Turkey has pursued an active foreign policy and supported a number of recent popular uprisings throughout the Arab world. Having appeared on Arab TV channels such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya to express Turkish support of political opposition in revolutionary Arab countries, Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, is now a familiar and popular figure in the Arab world. The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, conducted an ‘Arab Spring Tour’, where he visited post-uprising Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. In his visit to the latter, Erdogan was greeted at the airport by chairman of Libya’s new National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil. He has even been compared by some to the late Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose pan Arab propaganda, amongst other factors, made him a regional hero in the 1950s.