Turkey's Constraining Position on Western Reform Initiatives in the Middle East.

The article assesses the initial reaction of Turkey to the launching of the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative, a Western-originated Middle East reform project fostered by U.S. Turkey faced obstacles to promoting a reform union in the region such as the Iraq situation, the Palestine-Israeli conflict and the negative American image in the area. Factors considered in Turkey's potential to contribute to the democratization project in the Middle East are domestic constraints, secularism, and its relations with U.S. and the European Union.