The Turkish capital Ankara is fast emerging as a hub for Middle Eastern diplomatic traffic.
On November 12, both Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas addressed the Turkish parliament, making it the first time that an Israeli head of state spoke in the legislative chamber of a Muslim country.
Only days before that, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was in town, making just the second visit to Turkey by a Saudi monarch in the last 40 years. That trip came only a few weeks after an official visit by Syrian President Bashar Assad, who became the first Syrian president to have ever visited Turkey.
All of this would have seemed almost inconceivable only a few years ago. For decades, Turkey kept Arab and Muslim countries of the Middle East at arm's length, as Turkish diplomacy focused on cementing the country's alliance with the West, distancing itself from the Ottoman Empire's Islamic past in the process.
But now Turkey led by the liberal Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) is trying to strengthen relations with its neighbors, while at the same time recasting itself as a mediator in the region.
"This has always been part of their game plan. The AKP has always felt that Turkey has punched below its weight internationally, that it had been too timid and sat in the corner," says Henri Barkey, chairman of the international relations department at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and an expert on Turkey.
"These AKP guys don't have any qualms about seeing Turkey as part of the Middle East. But they don't see the future as restricted to the Middle East. They see Turkey as a conduit between the east and the west in the most expansive sense of the word," Barkey adds.
In his speech to the 550-member parliament in Ankara, Peres suggested Turkey's growing regional involvement gives it a role to play in reducing the tension in the Middle East. "Turkey can make a unique contribution ... as both a global architect and a local actor," the Israeli president said, speaking in Hebrew translated into Turkish.
Peres and Abbas had come to Ankara to preside over the signing of an agreement to create a joint industrial park on the border between Israel and the West Bank, which would be operated with Turkish help.
Cengiz Candar, a leading Turkish political analyst, says the industrial park project is indicative of the niche Ankara which has strong relations with Israel as well as Syria and Iran would like to carve out for itself in the region. "This whole exercise is a display of Turkey projecting
Yigal Schleifer is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul.
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.