The U.S.-Turkey Partnership: One Step Forward, Three Steps Back
By Michael Werz and Max Hoffman
March 12, 2015
President Barack Obama made a large political investment in Turkey in
2009 for a series of compelling reasons, which he laid out in a speech
to the Turkish parliament during his first overseas trip as president.
His administration recognized that Turkey’s role would be essential to
tackling a series of challenges important to the United States,
including stabilizing Iraq, solidifying a sanctions regime to pressure
Iran to negotiate on its nuclear ambitions, and combating terrorism.
Through this investment, President Obama sought to strengthen the
three pillars of the U.S.-Turkey partnership that were referenced in
his Ankara speech: Turkey’s status as a “strong, vibrant, secular
democracy” and its commitment to the rule of law; Turkey’s important
role in the NATO alliance and its push for membership in the European
Union, both of which bind it firmly to the West; and Turkey’s
potential to serve as an interlocutor and a model to the Middle East
and the broader Muslim world as part of President Obama’s efforts to
patch up America’s image in the Muslim world.
But this investment has not been reciprocated. The ruling Justice and
Development Party, or AKP, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
have handled domestic and regional developments in a way that has
raised doubts about each of these pillars. Few observers would count
Turkey as a vibrant democracy. Turkey’s bid for EU membership has
stalled, and its role as a reliable NATO ally has been questioned.
Moreover, the country’s appeal as a model for the region has eroded
significantly, and its ability to influence regional dynamics has
decreased as Syria and Iraq have spun out of control.
There are many reasons for the deterioration on each of these
fronts–including domestic political pressures on the AKP, the
ideological positions of its leadership and the political
constituencies on which it relies, and remarkable regional
upheaval–but the end result is that Turkey has distanced itself from
the West and from Western values.
The bottom line is that the United States’ investment in Erdogan and
the AKP has not worked, and the United States should try a new
approach. The Turkish government seems determined to crack down on
dissent. It has signed energy and defense accords with Russia and
China that undermine NATO positions, and it routinely bargains with
the United States over what should be basic transactions between
allies in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or
ISIS. Additionally, the AKP leadership has repeatedly resorted to
rhetorical attacks on the United States, the European Union, and
Israel, which only increase latent anti-Americanism in Turkish
society. It is time for the United States to try a new policy and to
bring its considerable leverage to bear. The United States should let
the AKP enjoy what pro-government voices have called the country’s
“precious loneliness.”
Early optimism for a new partnership
According to a famous Kemalist mantra, “Turkey is a country surrounded
by seas on three sides, and by enemies on four sides.” This perception
informed generations of Turkish students and policymakers, reflecting
the limits placed on Turkish political vision by the Cold War era.
More than any other country in the Western alliance, Turkey was frozen
into a geopolitical box by a bipolar world. For much of the 20th
century, the country was surrounded by members of the Soviet-allied
Warsaw Pact, authoritarian regimes of Baathist or Islamist
orientation, or nations with which it had deep historical animosities,
such as Greece.
This siege mentality began to soften in the 1990s and underwent a more
thorough change with the electoral victory of the conservative AKP in
2002. Then-Prime Minister Erdogan declared in September 2008 that this
“Turkish complex ¦ is behind us” after President Abdullah Gul
concluded a historic visit to long-estranged Armenia. These
shifts–both real and rhetorical–were part of an important attempt to
overcome the widespread Turkish misconception that other nations were
trying to hold the country down. Later, in 2009 and 2010, Foreign
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s “zero problems with our neighbors” policy
built upon this premise, aiming to turn old enemies into friends and
becoming the catchphrase of Turkish diplomacy. Davutoglu’s approach,
outlined during the years he spent in an advisory role before assuming
the position of foreign minister, sought to reinvigorate Turkey’s bid
for EU membership, normalize relations with Syria and Armenia, take
steps to resolve the Cyprus dispute, and boost trade ties with the
Middle East and Africa. While this approach was perhaps
deterministic–relying on Turkey’s geography as something of a crutch
to ensure and explain its relevance–it was an important step forward.
This new outlook prompted great optimism among Western observers and
friends of Turkey, who hoped that it would render obsolete the
stubborn Turkish conspiracy theories that saw Western imperialism
behind every regional dynamic. The new approach seemed to offer a
modern, rational position–albeit one defined within a conservative
perspective and with universalist ingredients–that sought engagement
with the Levant alongside a push for membership in the European Union.
The “Kurdish opening” in 2009 was the domestic counterpart to this
policy. It was a genuine attempt to demilitarize Turkish politics and
society and to end a conflict that had left tens of thousands of
people dead over the previous three decades, most of them Kurdish
citizens of Turkey. Implicitly, the outreach and rhetorical shift
around the opening began to reverse the vague and archaic preamble of
the Turkish Constitution, which categorically prohibits “activity
contrary to ¦ [the] historical and moral values of Turkishness.” For
example, state-run television and radio stations began to broadcast
extended Kurdish-language programming–something that was unthinkable
for years in Turkey. Explicitly, the opening was an acknowledgment of
the country’s diversity and a shift away from its ethnic definition of
citizenship.
Based on these advances and as part of his effort to recast U.S.
relations with the region in the wake of the Bush administration, as
mentioned above, President Obama visited Ankara during his first
overseas trip in 2009–a presidential first and a demonstration of the
importance he placed on the relationship. In his speech before the
Grand National Assembly of Turkey, President Obama emphasized,
“Turkey’s democracy is your own achievement. It was not forced upon
you by any outside power.” He also stressed the need for cooperation
between the United States and Turkey.
The Ankara speech inaugurated five years of serious investment of
political capital in Turkey by the Obama administration. This
investment continued despite increasingly discordant signals from the
Turkish side, where Prime Minister–now President–Erdogan often
succumbed to the temptation to use the United States as a populist
punching bag in his domestic politics. But the investment was the
right move at the time. The United States sought to elevate its
relationship with Turkey above the countless day-to-day transactions
between the two governments. By doing this, it hoped to create a
durable partnership that would increase Turkish domestic legitimacy
through democratic reforms; contribute to regional stability through
Turkish economic and political engagement with the Levant; and help
shape increasingly turbulent regional transformations in a democratic,
pluralistic way.
However, the past two years have made it painfully obvious that these
expectations are unrealistic. Perhaps the U.S.-Turkey partnership is
yet another victim of the unprecedented upheaval sweeping the region,
but it is clear that the relationship has reached and passed an
important turning point. Far from moving beyond the transactional,
U.S.-Turkish interactions are now testy, hard-bargaining affairs. The
U.S. policy of political investment has not paid off with Turkey–or
at least not with its current government. Now–as Omer Taspinar, an
expert on Turkey and a professor at the National War College, has
suggested–is the time to try a policy of “benign neglect” and let the
government in Ankara decide if it is prepared to engage in
reciprocity.
Moments of transformation
Three moments capture the trajectory of this transformation in the
U.S.-Turkey relationship and define the limits of Turkish capability
and influence. These moments are tied to three famous sites in three
troubled countries: Gezi Park in Turkey; Mosul in Iraq; and Kobani in
Syria.
Gezi Park
In May 2013, a small protest movement to save a city park in Istanbul
became an illustration of Turkish society’s transformation and the
Turkish government’s inability to respond with political flexibility.
The park was seized upon as a symbol by Turkey’s diverse, urban middle
class, which was chafing under the assertion of political and cultural
dominance by the previously marginalized Islamist working class–a
current that took political form in the AKP. The protests also showed
the world a detached, vindictive government that mismanaged a
legitimate protest and escalated the confrontation into a month-long
street fight that left five people dead, more than 8,000 people
injured, and substantially deepened polarization within Turkish
society.
>From a U.S. perspective, the lack of political responsiveness and
restraint from the AKP crystallized long-term concerns about the
deterioration of press freedom, soft and hard censorship, government
suppression of social media, new surveillance laws, and frequent
interference in the judicial process through the reassignment of
police and prosecutors. Over the course of the events at Gezi and
around the country, and in their aftermath, the Turkish government
pivoted decisively away from efforts to establish greater legitimacy
through democratic reforms, thus weakening an important pillar of the
U.S.-Turkish partnership.
Mosul
On June 11, 2014, one year after the protests in Gezi Park, ISIS
militants overran the Iraqi city of Mosul, taking Turkish Consul
General Ozturk Yilmaz and 49 other Turks hostage. This disaster was
the result of a chain of events that underlined Turkey’s lack of
strategic foresight and limited tactical capabilities, shaking the
second pillar of Turkey’s cooperation with the United States: positive
regional engagement.
On June 6, when it became clear that ISIS was about to take over the
city, Mosul Governor Atheel al-Nujaifi began making emergency calls to
regional political leaders to warn of the impending dangers. Despite
these calls, then-Foreign Minister Davutoglu declared on June 10 that
there was no threat to Turkey’s consul general or his staff. One day
later, contrary to Davutoglu’s statements, ISIS took Yilmaz and his
colleagues hostage.
However, it was the Turkish government’s reaction to the kidnapping
that was most telling. Instead of reviewing what went wrong to ensure
that it would not occur again–as the United States did after
Benghazi–on June 15, then-Prime Minister Erdogan asked the Turkish
media not to report on the incident. The next day, Deputy Prime
Minister Bulent Arinc echoed Erdogan’s call, and a court in Ankara
“issued ¦ a gag order ruling that `all kinds of print, visual and
Internet media are banned from writing and commenting on the
situation'” in Mosul. On June 17, the Supreme Board of Radio and
Television, or RTUK, delivered the decision of the 9th Heavy Penal
Courtto all media executives, giving the ban legal effect. Meanwhile,
the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted that those taken by
ISIS were “not hostages” but rather “Turkish citizens taken to an
unknown location.”
The Turkish government had become so focused on overthrowing Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad that they were unable to anticipate the
malignant spread of ISIS or to comprehend that the group might target
Turkish citizens. This is not the sort of regional engagement the
United States sought when it invested anew in the Turkish partnership
in 2009.
Kobani
The most telling turning point in the U.S.-Turkish relationship was
the disagreement over Kobani, a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria
along the Turkish border. Beginning in summer 2014 under the eyes of
the international media, control of the town became a major goal for
both ISIS and the coalition arrayed against it. This political
importance led to a desperate struggle between the Kurdish People’s
Protection Units, or YPG, that were defending the city and waves of
better-equipped ISIS fighters. Kobani–despite the efforts of Turkish
officials to downplay the town’s importance–become a symbol of
resistance against ISIS and a test case for whether the U.S.-led
coalition’s aerial strategy in support of indigenous ground forces
could hold off a concerted ISIS attack.
However, the Turkish government was deeply reluctant to help secure
this important military and propaganda victory for the anti-ISIS
coalition. Indeed, Turkey seemed more concerned with undermining
Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria than with confronting the threat
from ISIS. When the United States pressured Turkey to help the Kurds,
President Erdogan used the negotiations to try to extract concessions
from the United States on other aspects of Syria policy–primarily the
targeting of the Assad regime. Of course, the Turkish government did
accept and care for the tens of thousands of refugees who fled Kobani
in the wake of the ISIS attack and deserves credit for its
hospitality. But these people likely would not have had to flee Kobani
if the Turkish government had allowed supplies to reach the Kurdish
defenders instead of blocking resupply in the early stages of the ISIS
attack, effectively completing the ISIS siege.
While few serious observers expected or wanted Turkey to intervene
militarily in Syria without international backing, the Turkish role in
completing the siege of Kobani–along with anti-Kurdish rhetoric from
Turkish leaders–led to the perception that the AKP was more
interested in the destruction of a quasi-autonomous Kurdish region
along Turkey’s southern border than in preventing a humanitarian
catastrophe or cooperating with its NATO partners and the
international coalition in the fight against ISIS.
This policy of blocking supplies to Kobani led to widespread Kurdish
protests in major Turkish cities on October 6 and 7 that left up to 37
citizens dead, mostly in clashes between Kurdish sympathizers and
Islamist factions. The intense reaction elicited by the fighting in
Kobani demonstrated that the peace process between Ankara and the
Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK–a militant armed group that has
waged an intermittent war against the Turkish state–is now driven as
much by regional events as by the situation inside Turkey, which is an
important development. However, Ankara has been slow to recognize the
reality of a new, more interconnected, regional Kurdish body politic.
It is another indication of the Turkish government’s inability to
anticipate or react to shifting regional dynamics.
The AKP seeks to keep the Kurdish question a domestic issue, refusing
to acknowledge the development of a public sphere and political
discourse shared by Kurds inside and outside Turkey. The AKP’s
reluctant and belated support for the transit of a small detachment of
Kurdish Peshmerga–the military forces of Iraqi Kurdistan–from
northern Iraq to Kobani was its first concession to the reality that
the borders between northern Iraq, Turkey, and Syria have become less
relevant. It is unlikely to be the last such policy adjustment forced
on Turkey.
While Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan recently contended that
“Syrian Kurds are our natural ally,” many in his party disagree. This
leaves the AKP pursuing contradictory policy goals: seeking to
undermine Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria while trying to keep the
domestic peace negotiations with PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan on track.
This ambiguity has damaged the peace process in Turkey and has made it
impossible for the government to function as a regional mediator–the
role the United States would favor for its ally–in the near future.
In addition, the AKP’s handling of Kobani raises questions about the
current government’s ability to adequately assess regional
transformations and devise reliable policy responses. The U.S.
decision to airdrop ammunition and humanitarian aid into Kobani on
October 19 was a remarkable departure from past U.S. deference to
Turkish wishes on Kurdish issues. The White House ordered a major
shift in the U.S. approach to events along the Turkish border against
Turkey’s wishes and only informed President Erdogan one day in
advance, after the decision had been made. This action was not taken
lightly and was the culmination of months of growing frustration about
Turkey’s incessant bargaining over its participation in the anti-ISIS
coalition. American policymakers were well aware of Turkey’s concerns
about the objectives and character of the Democratic Union Party, or
PYD–a Syrian Kurdish political party. They were equally cognizant of
the AKP’s desire to broaden the international campaign against ISIS to
include the targeting of Syrian President Assad. However, for a NATO
ally to tie cooperation of almost any kind to fulfillment of all ofits
demands–demands that would have resulted in U.S. ownership of another
war in the Middle East–seemed unreasonable to American policymakers.
White House frustration about Turkey’s approach and President
Erdogan’s constant public sniping and populist demagoguery provide
some context for the military and strategic decision to save Kobani.
The future of the U.S.-Turkey partnership
After years of U.S. political investment in the Turkish partnership,
the two nations’ differences have become impossible to ignore. Close
cooperation with the United States has helped bolster Erdogan in his
roles as prime minister and president, but the United States has not
gotten much in return. In fact, this investment has often been met
with insults or conspiracy theories–for example, Erdogan’s absurd
statement implying that U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone was
“engaging in some provocative actions” in Turkey or AKP member and
Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek’s comment, referring to the United States,
that “These barons and neocons have decided to redesign Turkey to
govern it.” The rhetoric from Turkey’s leaders has gone back to the
bad old days but is now accompanied by strategic dissonance and
impotence rather than cooperation.
This is not to say that Turkey must blindly follow America’s lead on
Syria or anything else. But differences in approach do not excuse
cynical bargaining for advantage–at least not between allies. Just as
importantly, the United States is not responsible for Turkey’s
problems, and many in the U.S. administration seem tired of being
blamed for them. Turkey is an advanced country and should give up
hiding behind the trope of American imperialist meddling.
Finally, the AKP has demonstrated a vindictive, authoritarian streak
and a lack of political acumen that combine to make it a
less-than-valuable partner. For a relationship of marginal value, the
United States is sure putting up with a lot. Behlul Ozkan, an
assistant professor at Marmara University and the author of From the
Abode of Islam to the Turkish Vatan: The Making of a National Homeland
in Turkey, described the AKP’s reluctance to accept criticism as a
structural problem within the party: “More worrying than Davutoglu’s
failures as a policymaker,” he wrote in 2014, “is the fact that he
does not see his critics as legitimate. Both he and his supporters
believe him to be infallible.”*
The same is true for President Erdogan, who has jettisoned his earlier
efforts at reform and broader political inclusion to focus on divisive
identity politics and a fifty-percent-plus-one approach to consolidate
control. He made this trend clear in the nomination speech that opened
his presidential campaign in July. The speech was saturated with
religious metaphors and half-baked claims to both Islamic and
anti-colonial traditions. “For 200 years,” Erdogan said, “they tried
to tear us away from our history and from our ancestors. They tried to
get us to disown our claim.” He seemed to suggest that his presidency
would restore a vague, glorious Turkish state–but one predicated
against Western meddling. In Erdogan’s telling, then, Turkey is once
again threatened by enemies from outside and within–a far cry from
the hopes of the early AKP years. But beyond their dubious historical
legitimacy, such ideological delusions are causing significant damage
to Turkey’s foreign policy interests and its relations with the United
States.
Today, due in part to the AKP’s authoritarian and anti-Western shift,
Turkey is more isolated and less able to shape regional policy than at
any time since the end of the Cold War. Offers of cooperation from the
United States and the European Union are now more often dismissed than
accepted. One of the important lessons from the turning points that
have shaped the past two years is that Turkey’s geography is both an
asset and a liability. Geography can ensure relevance, but genuine
influence should be built upon reliable capabilities, a strong
understanding of regional shifts, and policies driven by national
interest and democratic convictions rather than religious paradigms.
Michael Werz is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Max Hoffman is a Policy Analyst at the Center.
* Correction, March 12, 2015: This brief incorrectly identified Behlul
Ozkan. He is an assistant professor at Marmara University and the
author of From the Abode of Islam to the Turkish Vatan: The Making of
a National Homeland in Turkey.