*Turkey Looks Forward to Historic Obama Visit*

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 4, 2009; 2:29 PM

rticle/2009/04/04/AR2009040401484.html

ANKARA, Turkey, April 4 — Shoe-shiner Kasim Kirsakal sat outside a
mosque, directly across from a bank using a poster of President Obama to
promote low-interest loans.

"Obama is trustworthy, that’s why people like those ads," he said,
referring to Garanti Bank’s poster campaign and its popular television
spot, in which an Obama look-alike promotes the bank at a mock White
House news conference.

When Obama arrives in Turkey on Sunday night for a two-day visit to this
capital city and Istanbul, he will find a nation of nearly 72 million
Muslims almost giddy at the prospect of improved relations with the
United States after years of tension with the Bush administration.

"Obama is going to just mesmerize people," said Ali Carkoglu, professor
of political science at Sabanci University in Istanbul. "He’s going to
be a rock star."

By making a high-profile visit to this proudly secular, predominantly
Muslim nation on his first overseas trip, Obama is signaling Turkey’s
strategic importance as a bridge between the West and the Middle East.

Turkey, which borders Greece and Bulgaria to the west and Syria, Iraq,
Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to the east, is an increasingly
active player in nearly every major issue affecting U.S. relations in
the region.

It’s a member of NATO and the G-20 group of leading economies, it holds
a rotating seat on the U.N. Security Council (for the first time since
1961) and it is pressing to join the European Union.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has been deeply
involved in dialogue between Israel, and Syria, and with Iran,
Pakistan and Afghanistan, where it has about 1,200 troops deployed as
part of a NATO force. Incirlik, a U.S. airbase in southern Turkey, is
a key staging area for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Turkey is also a critical part of the supply route for energy reserves
flowing from the Caspian Sea to Western markets. While the country is
dependent on Iran for much of its oil, it is a valuable partner as
Washington looks to engage Tehran.

"During the Bush administration, we had some different views. But now we
have identical policies with the Obama administration," said Ahmet
Davutoglu, Erdogan’s chief foreign policy adviser, who called Obama’s
visit "historic."

"If you look at the agendas of the two countries, it is almost the
same," he said. "Our experience in the region and their new approach are
very compatible."

During his visit, Obama will address the Turkish parliament — the first
U.S. president to do so since Bill Clinton in 1999 — and meet with
religious leaders. He will also make high-profile visits to the tomb of
secularist national founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Ankara and the Blue
Mosque in Istanbul, one of Islam’s most stunning sites.

On a sunny morning in the Bahceli neighborhood, where smartly dressed
shoppers sipped Starbucks coffee and the less well-to-do hawked fish
from their trucks, nearly every mention of Obama was greeted with a smile.

Yurdagul Oguzman, 29, who works in a small food shop, said that Obama
"seems peaceful." And, like many people interviewed, she said her
impressions of Obama were more positive than her views of the United
States.

"I have a bad impression of America because they are so fond of making
wars," she said. "But I think Obama can change that."

A recent poll by Infakto, a Turkish research firm, found that Turks
viewed Obama as the most trusted foreign leader. Almost 52 percent had a
"positive opinion" about Obama, although only 23 percent viewed the
United States favorably.

"People believe Obama has warmer feelings toward the Muslim world and
the relationship will be different," said Emre Erdogan, head of Infakto.
"And his middle name is Hussein!"

On one of the highest hilltops of Ankara, near the stone walls of a
citadel dating to Roman times, street sweeper Erdal Aydogan, 44, said
Obama was exciting.

"He has a Muslim background, so when he was elected we were so happy —
it was like he was elected for Turkey!" said Aydogan, who wore a blue
jumpsuit and old tassel loafers.

Turks are fiercely proud of their separation of mosque and state, and
many bristle when the country is referred to as a "moderate Muslim"
nation rather than a "secular democracy."

Carkoglu, the political scientist, said Turks are suspicious that Obama
sees Turkey mainly as a Muslim platform for repairing the battered U.S.
reputation in the Islamic world.

"Obama is facing a subtle balancing act," Carkoglu said. "He has to be
careful not to call Turkey a Muslim country that is a role model for the
Middle East. We don’t want to be a Muslim role model. We want to be a
secular role model."

However, Islam is still a central pillar of Turkish identity. This
weekend, at the NATO summit in France, Erdogan objected to the
selection of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the
group’s new secretary general — largely because it was a Danish
newspaper whose publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad
enraged Muslims in 2005.

Obama also must balance the question of how to handle the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of Armenians 90 years ago as the Ottoman Empire
collapsed. For years Obama has called the incident "genocide" and
promised to recognize it as such if elected president.

Turks vehemently deny any mass killings and Erdogan, in a speech Friday
in London, again dismissed the "so-called genocide." Many people
interviewed said their opinion of Obama would sour immediately if he
mentioned Armenian "genocide."

In a narrow alley of ancient wood-and-brick houses, Handan Tunc, 33, a
mother of two in a headscarf, said she hoped Obama’s leadership could
help reverse the global economic crisis. She said her husband’s small
business selling socks and underwear had decreased by 70 percent.

"We don’t know yet what Obama will do, but there is something about him
that makes us think he will do better," she said.

While Turkish banks, which were restructured after a crisis in 2001,
have remained relatively stable, Turkish exporters have been battered as
European markets have dried up. The country is seeking aid from the
International Monetary Fund.

Umut Oran, a member of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP,
and head of the Turkish Clothing Manufacturers Association, said that in
the past eight months, the Turkish stock market and the national
currency, the lira, have lost 40 percent of their value.

Part of Turkey’s problem, Oran said, sipping cappuccino in the glitzy
Sheraton Hotel, where Obama will stay, is that relations between Turkey
and the United States "have been in the freezer" since the 2003 invasion
of Iraq. He said Turkey’s exports have quadrupled since 2001, but
exports to the United States have dropped from 10 percent of the total
to just 3 percent.

Oran said he hoped Obama would revive an idea, shelved in recent years,
to create an industrial zone in southeastern Turkey, near the Iraq
border, for production of tax-advantaged textiles and other goods for
export to the United States.

Oran said mass job creation in that region could help calm Turkey’s
long-standing battles with a Kurdish separatist insurgency that has
frequently crossed from northern Iraq to attack targets in Turkey.

"This is the most important thing Obama could do for the economy and to
help with stability in Iraq," Oran said.