Obama in Turkey
By Gideon Rachman
FT
April 8 2009 03:00
Gideon Rachman’s blog: Somebody seems to have forgotten to tell the
Turkish parliament that it is traditional to greet speeches by Barack
Obama with regular standing ovations and whoops of approval. It was
rather strange and unsettling to listen to an Obama speech on Monday
that was not interrupted in this way. It forced you actually to listen
to what he was saying.
Of course, there were a few rounds of applause punctuating the speech.
Obama got clapped for using a Turkish word, for mentioning some
successful Turkish basketball players, for condemning the PKK as
terrorists and for asserting that "the US is not and never will be at
war with Islam".
The passage of his speech on the Armenian issue was greeted with
studious silence. But given that Obama has, in the past, called for
official US recognition of the massacres of 1915 as genocide, this was
probably about as good as he could have hoped for. I wouldn’t have been
surprised if there had been some walk-outs. As it is, Obama is
obviously trying to edge away from a commitment on the genocide issue
that was convenient during the election (there is a powerful Armenian
lobby in the US), but that is distinctly inconvenient now. He has got
the cover he needs because Turkey and Armenia are, in fact, edging
closer towards reconciliation. That allowed him to avoid using the
G-word20in his address to the Turkish parliament and to speak, in
generalised terms, about the virtues of countries coming to terms with
their past.
On Tuesday, Obama is scheduled to do a town-hall meeting in Istanbul
with Turkish students. That should be interesting. Certainly, his
session with French and German students at a similar event in
Strasbourg has been one of the highlights of the tour so far. It
allowed him to showcase all his charm and quickness – and to send a
subliminal message to European leaders. Obama may be more popular in
their own countries than they are.
And yet, perhaps one shouldn’t over-interpret. A warm response to Obama
as a person does not necessarily signal agreement with his policies.
Before Obama’s town-hall meeting in Strasbourg, the students were
treated to a warm-up debate – featuring me and other "thinkers", such
as Bernard-Henri Lévy and Ahmed Rashid. A lot of the participants were
students at ENA, the elite French college, which is now based in
Strasbourg. The real radicals were, of course, busy rioting on the
outskirts of the city.
And yet, I couldn’t help noticing what got the students going: a
question that condemned American "double standards" on human rights was
greeted with sustained applause. An attack on globalisation was also
cheered. Obama is popular in Europe. But American foreign policy is
still treated with suspicion.