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Beyond NATO and EU Enlargement: A New Track of Strategic Engagement with Turkey

Inaugural Workshop

13 - 14 September 2011
London

ISD and Brookings convened a group of 30 leading European, US and Turkish policy experts and relevant business and government figures in London on 13-14 September to discuss the feasibility of creating a new track for dialogue with Turkey. The Workshop included discussion of joint European, US and Turkish geo-political interests, and examined how to develop a broader geo-strategic approach to Europe’s wider neighbourhood – and beyond – that can  more effectively engage Turkey, the US and potentially Russia.

The Workshop is part of a wider project that aims to establish a Task Force to explore effective mechanisms for the establishment of a new geo-strategic track of transatlantic engagement with Turkey that could lead to practical partnership in the resolution of wider regional problems. This project seeks not to supplant but to complement the existing EU enlargement and NATO tracks of engagement. As Turkey strives to assert its geostrategic position in its neighbouring regions, developing its own ‘neighbourhood’ policy to enhance its spheres of influence, it is necessary – and advantageous – for both Europe and the United States to open an additional track of strategic engagement with Turkey.

The Workshop took place with the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Leading activists from pro-democracy movements in the Middle East, speaking at a Weidenfeld Debate, February 2012
Lord Weidenfeld and Sir Ronald Grierson, co-founders of the Weidenfeld Scholarships and Leadership Programme, April 2010
Jonathan Powell, former Chief of Staff to Tony Blair, addresses the inaugural Turkey Workshop, London, September 2011
CEDAR Chair Ahmed Larouz, addressing the Social Innovation and Social Action Conference, Lambeth Palace, November 2011
Peter Kellner, President of YouGov and Dr David Muir, Faith in Britain, at the launch conference of the Phoenix Initiative, October 2010
Historian Saul Friedlander, Inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in Historiography at the University of Oxford, May 2012
HE Karel Schwarzenberg, Czech Foreign Minister, addresses an invited audience at an ISD policy breakfast, October 2011
Journalist and blogger Sunny Hundal, delivering a presentation at ISD's Social Media and Intolerance workshop, April 2012
Vanessa Redgrave, Humanitas Visiting Professor in Drama 2012, speaking at the University of Oxford, February 2012.