At the big defense expo in Kazakhstan, if you recall, the two main foreign countries exhibiting their hardware for Kazakhstan were Israel and Turkey. The conference ended just before the brouhaha with the Turkish aid flotilla going to Gaza, and I wondered, how would it have turned out had that been going on while Kazakhstan was buddying up to Turkey and Israel at the same time. Well, at the Asia Summit that's been going in Turkey, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev weighed in on the controversy:
"The Israeli Armed Force's attack on the humanitarian ship, which took place in the Mediterranean Sea, intensified the situation in this region. Standing on this rostrum I urge all conflicting sides to reach compromise," the Kazakh leader said.
He said that "it is difficult even start talking about security and stability in the region" without investigating all circumstances of the incident at an international level.
In this respect, Nazarbayev said that "the Asian conference has a range of confidence-building measures specifying the main spheres of cooperation".
Spoken like a true multivectoralist.
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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