Obamania!

One of modern history’s most successful PR campaigns has produced a new leader for our planet, along with its highest expectations for a single man. Sentimental speeches and celebrations are all fine, but it is time to rationalize irrational expectations. Barack Obama is not a magician; he is a bright young man.

With the exception of a few in Turkey’s civilian and military bureaucracy who favored John McCain because “the devil I know is better than the devil I do not know,” most Turks have joined a global chorus to embrace President Obama.

A couple of days before the U.S. vote, a taxi driver kindly shared with me a well-kept secret about Mr. Obama. Do not tell everyone, he warned me in an undertone, the man is a devout Muslim. The next day I learned from a shop-owner that Mr. Obama was a secret fan of Turkey, “secret” because he did not want his love affair with the Crescent and Star to be known by Greeks and Armenians who are fools to think he is on their side. How we journalists often think we know better than others!

I left the shop, totally relieved having learned that the world’s most important man was a Muslim whose heart was filled with deep affection for our beloved country. But that reminded me of another big American-Turkish secret I accidentally uncovered in the mid-1990s when an old lady in an Aegean town told me she would vote for then prime minister, Tansu Ciller, because, “Bill Clinton was in love with her,” and with Mrs Ciller in power we could rule the world! Judging from how Turkish affairs went at that time, I inevitably concluded that the U.S. president’s was an unrequited love.

It seems that Turks are not the only ones who think Mr. Obama was the best choice for U.S. president and also their best interests. Interestingly, all of the world’s otherwise divergent nations tend to unite around the “American dream.” They all think Mr. Obama will bring political fortune to their countries.

In Turkey, Mr. Obama has even succeeded to unite otherwise warring ideologies, Islamists and secularists, who, for different reasons, think that the new U.S. president will help advance their cause. The Islamists think Mr. Obama’s democratic spirit will be a boost for religious, Sunni Muslim liberties in Turkey, while the secularists believe their hated concept of “Turkey: A moderate Islamic state as role model for the Middle East” is now doomed to die. Perhaps both camps are right.

Meanwhile, liberals think Mr. Obama’s victory means broader rights for Turkey’s Kurds and a historic handshake between Ankara and Arbil; while nationalists think it means the demise of the PKK. Perhaps both groups are right.

Beyond our borders, the Armenians will naturally expect Mr. Obama to honor his word and formalize “the Armenian genocide, not as an allegation, a personal opinion or a point of view, but as a widely documented fact.” The Turks will expect him to do as his predecessors did in the past and retreat from this “simple election pledge” and not risk tension with the too-strategically important Turkey.

Greeks and Greek Cypriots think Mr. Obama, aided by their all-time ally Joseph Biden, will side with them over Cyprus and the Aegean. The Turks shrug this off, thinking Greeks and Greek Cypriots are fools to think so. Such examples of diverging nations converging over Mr. Obama can be multiplied across the globe, from Iran to the Jewish state, from the Koreas to China, Russia, Georgia, Iraq, Pakistan, India and probably most of non-North America, too. But this is practically impossible!

We do not yet know how much Mr. Obama will run the White House like Mr. Obama and how much like the President of the United States. The optimal balance he will find between these “two men” will please some and disappoint others, and that is all too normal. But the White House is now certainly in uncharted territory.

There is going to be a nice little test case to gauge his “love affair” with Turkey, though. Will Mr. Obama’s administration approve the sale to Turkey of Predator B? The hunter-killer Predator B, otherwise known as the MQ-9 Reaper is a solid unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, which, unlike most others in this family of air platforms, can bomb designated targets.

Ankara has officially requested Predator B in what could be a government-to-government sale, with unknown prospects for an American go-ahead.
Ah, by the way, the Turkish military intends to use the powerful UAV against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, the “common enemy” of both Turkey and America … ence of erupting the dialogue.