If Arab League chief Amr Moussa is looking for a way to reverse the public's perception that his organization is incapable of doing anything useful, he ought to consider paying a visit to Turkey.

In recent years, the Turkish government has been earning the opposite reputation, emerging as an effective force for diplomacy and peacemaking in the conflict-ridden Caucasus and Middle East.
In fact, Turkey's election last week as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council reflects both the country's growing influence on the world stage and the international community's increasing confidence in the Turks to play a positive role in their neighborhood. Given that the country's influence will only increase when it takes its seat on the powerful world body, Moussa would do well to begin building a peacemaking partnership between Turkey and the Arab League.
Instability in the region has prompted Turkish leaders to become more active in their conflict-resolution efforts, thereby fulfilling a foreign policy role that has previously been assumed - but in recent years neglected - by the United States.
At a time when the U.S. was still working to isolate Damascus, for example, Ankara was leading efforts to rekindle peace negotiations between Syria and Israel. While these talks have not yet borne fruit, they have provided an opportunity for both sides to begin communicating their grievances - and for Turkey to demonstrate its enormous potential to help stabilize the broader Middle East.
Moussa has racked up a few diplomatic achievements of his own over the last few months, not least of which was the Arab League's involvement in the Lebanese reconciliation process. But despite relative successes such as these, the Arab League has not yet reversed its reputation for inaction. Nor has it made progress on resolving the region's single worst problem, the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is not that the league has not tried.
In 2002, all of its members collectively offered Israel full and normal relations in exchange for a withdrawal from Arab land. But this historic peace proposal fell flat in part because of a lack of follow-up and public-relations efforts by its sponsors.
It is precisely gaps such as these that Turkey can help to fill, especially after the country assumes its Security Council seat, a post that will naturally command the attention of the international community. And with a Turkish-Arab alliance standing ready to press the case for ending the decades-old Middle East conflict, Israel will no longer be able to recycle the tired excuse that it lacks a genuine partner for peace.
(Source: dailystar.com)