OBAMA’S TURKISH SUCCESSES
By Utku Cakirozer
Washington Post
April 9 2009
In the aftermath of President Obama’s visit to Turkey early this
week, PostGlobal asked five Turkey experts from prominent American
research and policy institutions for their reactions to President
Obama’s visit to Turkey. They reached broad consensus on two issues.
First, Obama made it clear to everyone where exactly Turkey stands
in the eyes of the United States. He confirmed his administration’s
perception that Turkey belongs to West, and supported Turkey’s
European Union accession process. He did this not only symbolically
(by including Turkey to his tour to Europe rather than to Middle East),
but also with powerful statements before the Turkish parliament in
Ankara. While showing great respect to Islam, the religion of the
majority of Turkish society, he underlined the secular and democratic
nature of the country, too.
Second, he made great strides toward remaking America’s image within
Turkish society. Between his personal charm, his promise never to make
war against Islam, his firm support for Turkey’s EU accession process
and his promise to continue supporting Turkey’s struggle against
terror, he gave important signals that Turks immediately understood.
Some observers prefer a cautious stand about the future of the
relationship, especially regarding the American Armenian community’s
expectation that the President will officially declare the killings
of Armenians during the First World War as "genocide." These analysts
warn that such a development could radically change that rosy forecast
for Turkish-American relations.
Other analysts were less satisfied with the President’s performance,
highlighting his avoidance of certain human rights issues like freedom
of expression and women’s rights – the roots of which problems,
they believe, emanate from the authoritarian attitudes of the AKP
government.
Thoughts from the five experts, in their own words, are below. Please
add your own impressions in the comment thread.
Zeyno Baran Director, Center For Eurasian Policy, Hudson Institute
President Obama made America human again–by reaching out to the
various communities in Turkey, holding a town hall meeting with Turkish
youth and giving a masterful speech in the Turkish parliament. He
personified an America no longer afraid to interact with others on an
equal footing. He was already hugely popular and I believe many Turks
are even more hopeful that he will indeed bring peace and prosperity
to Turkey’s difficult neighborhood.
It was extremely important for him to refer to Turkey as a secular
democracy; this once and for all ended the debate about whether the
U.S. under the Obama administration would continue to see Turkey as
a Muslim country or once again see it as part of Europe.
He often referred to American history and experiences and his personal
life story to make his point, which was much more effective than just
lecturing another sovereign nation about the things they ought to
be improving, including the treatment of minorities and dealing with
past traumas. In fact, the two countries have very similar founding
principles of uniting people under the common citizenship concept,
not under an ethnic or religious identity, yet both have fallen short
of the promise at times. Turkey gave women their rights much sooner
than the United States, yet its concept of being "Turkish" somehow
moved from being an ideology like being an "American" to an ethnic
one, thereby causing ethnic strife, especially between the Kurds and
Turks, as well as other non-Turkish communities. For its part, the
United States has redeemed itself by electing a black president, yet
the Native American communities are still waiting for their justice
and dignity.
I believe it was also important that during his speech at the
Parliament, President Obama talked at length about George Washington
and how important a figure he is for the United States. In this
spirit, he praised Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his
immense contribution to the creation of modern Turkey out of the
ashes of a fallen empire. Although Americans sometimes are critical
of Turks still holding Ataturk in such high regard and naming streets,
schools, airports and many others after him as being stuck in the past,
the capital of United States is named after President Washington,
along with many other sites and even the delicious (Washington)
apple! Turks and Americans may be closer than they think.
Soner Cagaptay Director, Turkish Research Program, The Washington
Institute For Near East Policy
There has been much confusion in the United States and Europe about
Turkey’s identity. Until September 11, Turkey was considered a
NATO ally, a secular democracy and a member of the West. Suddenly,
following September 11, this changed. Turkey became a Muslim ally,
considered a model of Islamic democracy and a member of the Muslim
world. Punditocracy began to describe Turkey as a "moderate Muslim
state," and regional experts viewed Turkey as part of the Greater
Middle East. A German Turk born and raised in Berlin told me that
prior September 11, his friends referred to him as "the Turk." On
September 12, he became "the Muslim." He added: "I had not changed
in one night, but the world had."
With his Ankara address, Obama put the post-September 11 confusion
about Turkey’s identity to rest. The President started his speech with
a rhetorical question: "I have been to…the NATO Summit in Strasbourg
and Kehl, and the European Union Summit in Prague. Some people have
asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul
to send a message. My answer is simple: Evet (Yes, in Turkish)." The
president added that Turkey belongs in Europe and the West and that
"Europe gains by the diversity of ethnicity, tradition and faith." For
Obama, Turkey is a country in the West that happens to be Muslim,
rather than a Muslim country in the Muslim world.
This is good news for Turkey’s democracy, and even better news for
the Western orientation of Turkish foreign policy. In his address,
Obama made strong references to Turkey’s secular democracy and
the need for the country to move towards European Union (EU)
accession. Importantly, Obama set Europe and its liberal democratic
traditions as Washington’s benchmark for evaluating domestic Turkish
developments. On foreign policy, lately a civilizational view of world
politics has formed in Ankara, relativizing good and bad according to
religion and splitting the Turks from the West. In the latest incident,
at the Davos meeting in January, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan chided Israel’s president for "killing people" — and then
returned to Ankara to host the vice president of Sudan. To encounter
this religion-based civilizational view, the President referred to
Turkey as a "resolute ally and a responsible partner in transatlantic
and European institutions." Obama understands Turkey’s strategic
importance â~@~UTurkey borders Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Russia, and
is a staging ground for operations in Afghanistan and beyond. With
his speech, Obama set NATO as a Western gauge for cooperation with
Turkey on key foreign policy issues.
Steven Cook Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
President Obama found that on the range of important issues from
Iraq and Iran to Middle East peace, Turkey’s policies are generally
consistent with those of the United States. The Turks have long sought
a stable, federal Iraq. The flowering of relations between Ankara
and Irbil, the seat of the Kurdish Regional Government, combined
with considerable Turkish investment in northern Iraq mitigates a
complicating factor in Washington’s Iraq policy. The situation in
Kirkuk and the persistence of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) violence
against Turkey remain flashpoints, but as the Turks and Iraqi Kurds
develop closer ties, the magnitude of these problems diminishes,
forestalling some of the most dire scenarios about Turkish military
intervention that could unravel the progress that Iraq has made over
the last eighteen months.
In the context of improved Turkish-Iraqi Kurdish relations, the
Kurdish president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, has called upon PKK
terrorists to lay down their arms or leave Iraq. For the United
States, Turkey is no longer the malevolent wildcard in the game of
stabilizing Iraq. Once more, President Obama’s clear declaration that
the PKK is a terrorist organization that present a common threat to
Turkey and the United States helped reassure Ankara that Washington
will not back away from 2007 agreement supplying the Turkish military
"actionable intelligence" to combat the terrorists. This is likely
to garner President Obama significant amounts of good with both the
Turkish government and people.
Svante Cornell Research Director for the Central Asia-Caucasus
Institute, School of Advanced International Studies
Mr. Obama’s visit to Turkey was an important step in rebuilding
Turkish-American relations and to restoring America’s position in the
greater Black Sea region. In particular, Mr. Obama’s speech to the
Turkish parliament should be commended for the offer of cooperation
and restoring the strategic relationship between the two countries. On
the whole, Mr. Obama’s speech did include important signals to Turkey,
but failed to state a number of important elements.
On the positive side, Mr. Obama departed from the misguided notion,
popular in parts of the Bush administration, to give importance to
Turkey as a "Muslim democracy", a policy that often slipped into
support for "moderate Islamic" movements such as the ruling AKP. To
many Turks, however, that was taken as an insult: why, many Turks
asked, was their country’s democracy qualified with the "Muslim"
adjective, denying the country’s long history of secularism? Mr. Obama
did not mix Turkey’s political system and its cultural identity. He
explicitly paid homage to Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish
republic, and made sure to emphasize the word "secular" when referring
to Turkey as a "strong, vibrant, secular democracy" This is a positive
factor, as it may rein in some of the AKP’s efforts to undermine
secularism, which the party has been able to advance with little
reaction from the West and to the anger of secular Turks. If the
Obama administration continues to emphasize the twin, interrelated
elements of secularism and democracy, that will bode well for the
future. Moreover, Obama’s clearly equated al-Qaeda’s terrorism with
the PKK’s terrorism – showing appreciation for the sensitivity of
the issue, which will be key to the bilateral relationship.
But Mr. Obama failed to indicate awareness of the authoritarian
tendencies of the AKP government, and of the deteriorating conditions
for women in the AKP’s Turkey. While speaking in general terms on
the need for further reform, he did not allude to the government’s
onslaught on freedom of expression in the country, exemplified by
the Prime Minister’s public bullying of oppositional media, lawsuits
against journalists, the shady takeover by pro-government businesses
of media outlets, or the half billion dollar fine slammed on the
country’s largest and moderately oppositional media group. Neither
did he mention the importance of ensuring women’s representation in
the workforce and in politics, both of which have declined rapidly
since the AKP came to power.
Mr. Obama also glossed over Turkey’s role as an energy corridor, but
U.S.-Turkish cooperation in the Caspian region and its accomplishments
could have emphasized more explicitly. Mr. Obama also referred only
in passing to Turkey’s role on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between
Armenia and Azerbaijan. Yet Mr. Obama’s hope that Turkish-Armenian
relations will be normalized is entirely dependent on progress in
that conflict. However, Mr. Obama did not reiterate America’s own
active participation in efforts to resolve that conflict. Indeed,
the problem was on clear display as Azerbaijani president Ilham
Aliyev refused to travel to Turkey for a meeting of the Alliance of
Civilizations, in spite of phone calls from Hillary Clinton. Azerbaijan
is understandably concerned by American and AKP support for a
normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations that would not go hand
in hand with Armenian concessions on the Karabakh conflict.
Omer Taspinar Director, Turkey Project, Brookings Institute
The symbolism of this visit would have been much different had
Obama decided to come to Ankara after visiting Cairo, Amman, Beirut,
Tel Aviv and Riyadh. But a visit to Turkey after visiting London,
Strasbourg and Prague is a whole different affair. The message is
crystal clear: Turkey belongs in Europe.
Equally clear is the fact that we are living in a world where the
"clash of civilizations" has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In
this increasingly polarized global context between Islam and the West,
Turkey is the most democratic, secular and pro-Western country in
the Islamic world. It is the only Muslim member of NATO and the only
Muslim country in accession negotiations with the European Union. To
use the old cliché, Turkey is the bridge between the Middle East and
the West. More importantly, it is an active facilitator of difficult
relations between Israel and Syria and a country that wants to play
a similar role between Washington and Tehran.
All these factors have significantly contributed to the symbolism
of the visit. But make no mistake. An important part of President
Obama’s visit to Turkey was also about averting a major crisis in
relations because of the Armenian genocide issue. Let’s not forget
that President Obama pledged several times during his electoral
campaign to recognize the Armenian genocide. On April 24, in less
than two weeks after his visit to Ankara, President Obama will face
a critical decision. Will he refer to a "genocide" in his Armenian
Remembrance Day letter? Most Turkish analysts seem to believe that he
will not. I’m not so sure. When asked the question, President Obama
replied by saying that he has not changed his mind on this issue. But
he also pointed out that the focus should be on Turkish-Armenian
reconciliation, and not on America’s view of this issue.
Any presidential recognition of the Armenian genocide, or a
Congressional resolution in favor of such recognition, will radically
change Turkish-American relations. Ankara could retaliate in a number
of ways. In its most extreme, but not necessarily most unrealistic
form, scenarios include a decision by Ankara to limit the use of
the Incirlik Air Base, which provides more than half of the logistic
support for American troops in Iraq.
How can a crisis on this issue of genocide be averted? The answer
is simple: Turkey needs to open its border with Armenia. The key
development in the aftermath of President Obama’s visit to Turkey
may very well be Ankara’s decision to do so. Such a development
would provide the face-saving excuse Mr. Obama needs to refrain from
honoring his campaign promise on April 24. If Turkey opens the border,
the Armenian Remembrance Day letter may refer to positive developments
on the ground between Armenia and Turkey. Yet, Ankara will drag its
feet before opening the border and try to get America’s support for
Azerbaijan. It will be a very long two weeks until April 24th.