In geopolitics, even the best of friendsrnsometimes fall out. Consider the case of the U.S. and Turkey, whose Prime Minister met with President Bush on Nov. 5. The U.S. initiated the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to provide Turkey and Greece with the economic and military support necessary to keep them out of the Soviet sphere of influence. Turkey fought side by side with the U.S. in the Korean War. And the two nations have been nato allies since 1952. But recently the relationship has come under strain. First the U.S. Congress threatened to pass a controversial resolution condemning Turkey for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. Now Turkey's Islamist government is feuding with the pro-American Kurds of northern Iraq because it wants to smash anti-Turkish guerrillas the Kurds have failed to control. It's no surprise that old allies may disagree on individual issues or even go their separate ways, but as the U.S.'s up-and-down relations with France show, they can still find ways to deal with each other.
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