Since the early 1990s, Turkey has been bent on carving out a new role in the Middle East. The 1996 strategic alignment1 with Israel has been the main embodiment of this aim. The alignment itself-a unique development in the modern history of the region in that it brought together a Muslim and a Jewish state-caused great concern and even alarm among many Arab countries. Some viewed it as Turkey's second betrayal of the Arabs in fifty years: the first being Turkey's recognition of the State of Israel in 1949. The 1996 alignment looked especially alarming because it caught the Arab world in one of its weakest moments, in the aftermath of the fragmentation caused by the Gulf War and because it was interpreted as being anti-Arab to the core.