A Strategic Missed Opportunity: Turkey in Lebanon

The long-lasting political polarization in Lebanon has created schisms beyond the political and into the social and the cultural, tainting and reshaping competing national narratives. It is against such a backdrop of imbalance and tension that a role for Turkey would have been of a considerably beneficial character, but Ankara’s policy toward Beirut remained hesitant. Ankara, as weary and hesitant as it was prior to the Arab Spring and conflict in Syria, can be expected to avoid the troubled setting of Lebanon for a long time to come.