Transcript
NICK BURNS: I clearly remember and some of my colleagues who were U.S. officials at the turn when the Cold War ended, when communism melted away, and when democracy began to grow in Eastern Europe, I remember American pundits, and there may be even some of them still left in the room today, saying Turkey would be less important to the United States because the Cold War was ending, because Turkey, of course, had been a bastion of democracy during the Cold War itself.
That prediction turned out to be spectacularly wrong. I think any of us sitting here today, looking at Turkey objectively, looking at the relationship between our two countries objectively would have to say that Turkey is decidedly more important to the United States and to the European Union today than it was during the Cold War.
I think Richard Holbrooke put it best. He was last year’s Sabancı speaker and a good friend. Dick Holbrooke has said that Turkey is now to our national security what Germany was in the Cold War to American national security. It’s a front-line state. And that front line is no longer in Europe. That front line is in the Middle East. And that is the first and primary reason why Turkey, in my judgment, is so clearly and so vitally now the pivotal European ally in a literal and figurative sense for my country.
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