Turkish-US relations

In official and unofficial messages coming from Washington on the one hand there has been an increasing stress on Turkey’s regional leadership role while on the other hand there has been strongest-ever criticism expressing deep worries against both the limitations of freedom of expression, journalists fearing reprisals if they criticized the ruling AKP government and Prime Minister Erdoğan and the growing conservatism and Islamofascist trends in Turkey’s governance which has been instigating anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and all sorts of hate speech on the streets.

As has always been the case when there is a Democrat president in the White House, an emphasis on human rights, individual rights, freedom of opinion and thought and minority rights will have more prominence in the Turkish-American relations than the predominantly defense cooperation dimension or military cooperation based perceptions of the Bush-like presidents.

Assuming that the U.S will need Turkey’s cooperation in withdrawing from Iraq or for its operations in Afghanistan and for such similar reasons or just because of the dictate of American contingency plans on Iran, the U.S. administration will be compelled to maintain good ties with Ankara and for that reason will remain silent on regression in the rights sphere, oppression of free thought, spread of hate speech or Ankara drifting from West and gradually anchoring the theocratic mentality of the East, will be a gross miscalculation for the present-day political rulers of Turkey.

Outbursts that could charm the chauvinistic desires of the masses suffering from inferiority complex may help earn few additional percentage points more votes in an election but with such behavior incompatible with statesmanship and poorly designed plots Turkey can only achieve isolating itself from the league of democratic nations and drift away from the European Union. These were indeed a summary of the assessments of Soner Çağaptay of the Washington Institute, Mark Parris, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Ian Lesser, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund that I presented in this column last week. One might say, of course, that Cağaptay, a Turkish-American, has been always against the AKP government. But, were not Parris and Lesser so sympathetic to the AKP rule in Turkey over the past six years? Is not the change in their approaches to developments in Turkey significant? Indeed so. The remarks of Parris, Lesser, as well as the recently released Human Rights Report of the State Department strongly criticizing the tactics of the government in silencing the media and the opposition are all indicative of the AKP losing its much-needed legitimacy to remain afloat in Turkey in the absence of domestic legitimacy.

’Leadership’ message is important

Indeed, the stress in Washington remarks, as well as in the Ankara remark of Obama’s special Mideast envoy George Mitchell, that Turkey’s leadership was important for peace in this region, were a reminder with a soft diplomatic jargon to Ankara and to Erdoğan that the U.S. administration expected Turkey and Erdoğan to act like a leader. What are the qualities of a leader? A leader is the one who does not create problems, but solves problems or contributes to a resolution of the problems. Is the message clear?

Apparently Erdoğan did not receive the message and he still continued talking as if he was an advocate of the Hamas terror gang. However, the message of Washington was that Ankara expected to convince Hamas to give up arms and engage in the peace process like a political party. Erdoğan continued to mix up democracy and election; civility and civilian politics with millenarianism, radicalism and terrorism.

On March 7, Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton will be making her first trip to Ankara since coming to office. Like most Turks I hope the visit becomes a prelude to an Obama trip to Ankara. Yet, Turkish administrators must understand that future of Turkish-U.S. relations will no longer be shaped through military cooperation only. Rights dimension is back on the agenda which as well includes the Armenian issue, the Cyprus problem as well as minority issues and individual rights.