Technology Slice Blog

Wikileaks Turkey - U.S. officials had scrambled to keep two allies from airing their growing differences in public — again. Hours before an annual joint military exercise was to begin in June 2009, Turkey booted Israel from the event. But American diplomats persuaded Turkey to paper over the differences, mainly involving Israel's war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip several months earlier, and officially describe Israel's absence as a mere delay. "Through some remarkable work with allies … we engineered a public 'postponement' of the international portion of the exercise," the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, the Turkish capital, reported. "But, the relationship is souring," it said of ties between Turkey, the only Muslim nation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and longtime U.S. ally Israel. The embassy's secret account was among the trove of documents about America's complicated relationship with an increasingly independent and ambitious...