On Tuesday, May 22, 2012, Layalina Productions will celebrate a decade of television diplomacy in the Middle East at its 10th Anniversary Gala, being held at the Newseum in Washington, DC. At the Gala, internationally acclaimed three time Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist Thomas L. Friedman and The Honorable Tara Sonenshine, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, will provide remarks and highlight Layalina's efforts to strengthen U.S.-Arab relations.

The row is symptomatic of Turkish anxiety that the country's rising "soft power", based on a booming economy and relative democratic stability ushered in by Erdogan after a long era of military coups, could be threatened by a nascent "Shi'ite axis" embodied by Iran and Maliki's Tehran-backed Baghdad government.

When the Arab Spring confronted the White House and State Department with the need to choose between embracing change and loyalty to the region's old guard the Obama administration chose change, albeit in the slowest and most cautious manner possible.

Turkey's recent activism in major regional issues is symbolic of its neo-Ottomanism, which is the essence of its new ideological approach to foreign policy. Turkey has risen to global prominence as a major Muslin state in the Middle East. But there is little evidence so far to suggest that Turkey's influence can spread beyond this sphere.

In dealing with these areas of risk, and particularly Syria, Turkey has to take intelligent decisions, ones which reflect close knowledge of its own transformational power and capacity, without allowing itself to be taken in by the bluster. Although the Iraqi, Syrian and Kurdish problems have their divergences and particular features, they are interconnected and interlinked problems.