In an interview with The New York Times, Erdoğan said Obama’s election had opened new opportunities for a shift in relations between the United States and Iran, Turkey’s neighbor. Obama said during his election campaign that he would consider holding talks with Iran, something the Bush administration has long opposed.

Erdoğan called the note of congratulations sent to Obama last week by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "a step that has to be made use of." Erdoğan, who departed on Wednesday for a visit to the United States to attend a G-20 summit on the global economic crisis, said Turkey was ready to be the mediator. "I do believe we could be very useful," he said.

Turkey says Iran has the right to produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes but is against nuclear weapons in its already volatile region. Worried over new crises in the Middle East, Ankara has been calling for a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

"We watch the relations between Iran and US with great concern," Erdoğan told the Times. "We expect such issues to be resolved at the table. Wars are never solutions in this age."

Turkey argues that it is uniquely positioned to facilitate talks between Washington and Tehran. It is a NATO member, and it secured a nonpermanent seat on the United Nations Security Council last month. It is a Muslim country that has renewed relations with its Middle Eastern neighbors in recent years, scoring a success this year by bringing Israel and Syria together for talks that had been frozen for years.

But Western officials are skeptical that Turkey, a member of NATO, could succeed as an impartial moderator between Washington and Tehran. "They know that being a mediator between the West and Iran is really risky," the newspaper quoted a Western official as saying. "It's going to put them in the wrong place."

Still, with a new American administration and a president-elect who has expressed his intent to make broad changes in foreign policy, there might be opportunities. "The ice will start shifting again in interesting and different ways," the official said.

Dialogue with Iran is part of a larger diplomatic drive by Turkey to mend fences with Middle Eastern neighbors. "Our principle in foreign policy is we're against earning enemies," Erdoğan said in the interview.

The government has also expanded ties outside the region -- announcing plans to open 15 new embassies in sub-Saharan Africa -- and has tried to rethink relationships at home. Last month, Turkish officials had talks with Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, a move that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

"They've been very helpful," the Western official said. And though diplomacy with Iran is a long way from succeeding, "one of the things that could help is a fellow Muslim country that is trying to lead Iran in a different direction."

Erdoğan, for his part, said that Obama's election is an opportunity for the United States to regain the trust of the world and reclaim "an image that's been lost." The United States "declared certain values firmly at the start of the 21st century," he said, but "not only did they not advance, they stepped backward."

"For me, it's very important to put these values into practice," said Erdoğan, who is going into his seventh year as prime minister. He offered Obama some advice: "Maintain the steadiness of your spine, but don't engage in fights."


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