A Diplomatic Offensive; A year ago Turkey was an outcast. Today it's a player.

Byline: Owen Matthews, With Sami Kohen in Istanbul

What a difference a year makes. Less than 12 months ago, Turkey was slipping to the sidelines of world politics. Its strategic partnership with Washington was in ruins after the Turkish Parliament refused U.S. forces permission to launch a northern front against Iraq last March. The prospect of Turkey's joining the European Union seemed a dream, requiring human-rights reforms so radical that no one in Brussels expected Ankara to comply. And hopes of finally reuniting the divided island of Cyprus after three decades of conflict never appeared more distant after the breakdown of U.N.-sponsored talks.

Suddenly that's all changed. Instead of being a bit player, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become the center of a diplomatic whirlwind that would put Henry Kissinger to shame. Erdogan was received with full state honors in Washington last week by George W. Bush, who described Turkey as a "friend and important ally"--a far cry from last year's conventional wisdom that a liberated Iraq would supplant Turkey as America's key military and political platform in the region. Erdogan has become the go-to guy for Muslim leaders--Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, Iran's Mohammed Khatami, and Syria's Bashar Assad have all been to Ankara during the past month seeking Erdogan's intercession with the United States or Israel. At home, Erdogan's religious-conservative AK Party has been so vigorous in passing new human-rights laws that EU membership is starting to look more like reality, less a pipe dream. European Commission head Romano Prodi pronounced himself "surprised" and "very impressed" during a recent visit, a strong hint that Brussels could give Turkey a start date for talks after an EU summit this December.

The point of this diplomatic maneuvering? Erdogan has two main goals. One is to restart stalled talks to reunite Cyprus before the island joins the EU in May, chiefly to remove a major obstacle to Turkey's own EU aspirations. The other is to persuade the United States to dial back Kurdish ambitions to create an autonomous federal state in northern Iraq, which Turkey fears would encourage separatist hopes among its 12 million Kurds.

On Cyprus, Erdogan has used the full weight of Ankara's influence to get the island's Turks back to the negotiating table, despite opposition from Turkey's military and Turkish Cypriots who oppose "surrender" ...