what obama should say to erdogan hugh pope, bosch public

8/14/2019 What Obama Should Say to Erdogan Hugh Pope, Bosch Public

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What Obama should say to Erdogan

Hugh Pope, Bosch Public Policy Fellow, The Transatlantic Academy

On 7 December, U.S. President Barack Obama receives the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep

Tayyip Erdogan. At a time of growing mutual suspicions, a face-to-face meeting will be of greatimportance between two men renowned for their straight-to-the-point frankness. There is

arguably no other country in the world with so many areas of common interest with the United

States, and yet Turkey both rashly overrates itself and is little understood and underrated in

Washington.

A steadying hand should be the two leaders first order of business. Just as a surprising numberof Turks expend their energy analyzing Washingtons supposedly nefarious plots to split up theircountry, a growing number of Americans interested in Turkey are just as busy analyzing

Ankaras latest supposed conspiracies against transatlantic and U.S. interests: is it abandoning

the West in favour of a neo-Ottoman dominion in the East? Is it loosening its half-century-oldsecurity anchor in NATO? Where is Erdogans rough-tongued criticism of Israel leading? Is the

innovating prime ministers feud with the Kemalist establishment turning him into a dictator? Do

grandiose Turkish stands alongside authoritarian anti-Western regimes in the Middle East make

Turkey Islamist? And is Turkey turning away from its U.S.-backed ambition of membership ofthe European Union?

The answer to all this is short: none of the above. In fact, Obama and U.S. officials can start outwith grateful recognition to the Turkish chief executive for the many areas in which the Turkish

policy is closely aligned with the United States. Praise is deserved for Ankaras role in what

progress has been made in Iraq, itself largely due to an about-turn in U.S. attitudes to cooperating

with Turkey in 2007. Turkey has been strongly supportive in Afghanistan and might to more; itis also helpful behind the scenes in Pakistan. The U.S. could go so far as to recognize that

Turkeys goals and achievements in the region -- freer travel between itself and several states,

increasing intra-regional trade, joint Cabinet meetings, and projects to knit regional infrastructuretogetheroffer a promising path towards greater stability, security, prosperity and better

governance in a traumatized Middle East. Despite its exaggerated self-image as a critical

regional dynamoin fact, Turkey is better compared to a large car with an underpowered engine

its new track record compares positively to the Wests controversial actions in the Middle Eastin past decades.

The U.S. and Turkey should resist what will be a temptation on both sides to spend the short timethey have on their differences over Iran, Sudan or Israel/Palestine. For sure, the U.S. side needs

to impress diplomatically on Prime Minister Erdogan how much his populist rhetoric in support

of anti-Western bugbears is damaging Turkeys position with its key partners and pro-Turkeyconstituencies in Washington and Brussels. And the U.S. should listen for any new message


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Erdogan might be bringing from his recent visits to Iran and Syria, and hear out his likelyargument that punitive sanctions against Irans nuclear ambitions will do little but consolidateyet another authoritarian Middle Eastern regime. But lengthy argument over these deeply-

entrenched issues will prove a red herring and has little chance of changing either side, given that

the two countries approaches to the region are dictated by fundamentally different domestic

political imperatives.

Instead, acknowledging that the Middle East is only one of several areas of overlapping U.S.

interests with Turkey, Obama and the U.S. team should focus on two matters that will really test

Turkeys intentions, need urgent attention, and, in the long term, have the most game-changingpotential in the region.

The Turkey-Armenia protocols

The first issue where the U.S. side can usefully help move a ball forward is Turkeys process of

normalization with Armenia. On 30 August, the two countries signed the texts of two protocolsto normalize diplomatic relations and to open the mutual border, closed since 1993. The text of

these protocols is based on a well-rooted bilateral process, but would likely not have been signed

in Switzerland without the combined close engagement of the U.S., Russian and French

governments. Indeed, this collaborative process is arguably one of the unsung top foreign policyachievements of the early Obama administration. But it has not yet reached a conclusion, and has

now been left hanging riskily half-complete.

The U.S. side should find out when the Turkish prime minister intends to push his parliament to

ratify the documents. If the Turkish side demurs by noting objections from its ally Azerbaijan

and repeating its insistence on upfront Armenian concessions to Azerbaijan in the conflict over

the Armenian-occupied territory of Nagorno Karabakh, the U.S. should not let this pass. Thereare too many good arguments for rapid ratification: 15 years of non-recognition and border

closure have done nothing to help solve the issue, whereas the confidence-building steps so far

have already breathed some new life into talks on disengagement; ratification has a clear imagebenefits showing Turkey as the more powerful player moving a step ahead in seeking to resolve

the situation; and to signal to the broader region that Turkeys vaunted zero problem foreign

policy has real substance. The wisdom of the normalization protocols is evidenced by the way

that on both sides they are opposed by nationalists and radicals.

Above all, the U.S. side should spell out in frank terms that it expects progress as a party with

direct interests in the outcome. It should remind Erdogan and his Foreign Minister AhmetDavutoglu that they raised firm expectations in Washington that they are willing to do what is

necessary to open the Armenian border. Interventions from President Obama in April Secretary

of State Hillary Clinton in August helped make the signing of the protocols happen. This is in theU.S. interest: major strain is put on the U.S.-Turkish relationship each year by the American


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domestic political imperative of satisfying the demands of the strong Armenian diaspora on thequestion of genocide recognition. Ratified protocols would be a key argument for the U.S.administration that Turkey is coming to terms with the Ottoman-era massacres of Armenians

during the First World War through a bilateral sub-commission with Armenia. Without

suggesting that the U.S. should use the genocide label in its annual 24 April anniversary

statementa bad idea that would re-legitimize maximalist nationalist arguments on both Turkishand Armenian sidesthe U.S. should make clear how uncomfortable it will be made if Turkey

has not ratified the protocols by the end of this year.

At the same time, the U.S. should reassure Turkey that it will do its best to help by pressing forthe protocols to be ratified in Armenia; by committing to work on its own and with its OSCE

Minsk Group partners Russia and France to avert the risk that Azerbaijan tries to derail the wholeprocess by some precipitate military action; and that while there should be no formal linkbetween the protocols and the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict over Nagorno Karabakh, the U.S.

will ensure that Armenia understands that long-term normalization with Turkey means

withdrawal from the occupied areas of Azerbaijan.

The coming EU-Turkey showdown

The second goal of the U.S. must be to impress on Prime Minister Erdogan the importance the

US attaches to Turkeys convergence with the European Union. Erdogan has given a low priority

in recent years to the EU. He is bitter about the failure, due to a Greek Cypriot veto in 2004, of

his real effort to reach a deal on the U.S.-, UN- and EU-backed reunification of Cyprus and thewithdrawal of Turkish troops; angry about the way the EU has done nothing to block Greek

Cypriotsuse of EU levers to slow Turkeys negotiations on membership to a crawl; and

discouraged by public and cynical opposition to the goal of full Turkish EU membership from

the German chancellor, the French president and other EU leaders. This sense of unfair exclusionis almost certainly informing the sharp negativity of his rhetoric as he embraces anti-Western

leaders in the Middle East, as is his sense that investing his political capital in the EU process is a

waste of his time.

The U.S. should convince Erdogan that explicitly resurrecting the EU goal can still give him a

political win, and is vital in any case. Erdogan has long underrated the import ance of Turkeys

convergence with the EU to its success. It is the chief cause of the rocketing rise of foreigninvestment in Turkey in the mid-2000s and has long been the main locomotive driving Turkeysmodernization efforts. The resulting new economic dynamism and success in reforming the state

have inspired much of the Middle Easts new esteem for his country.

The EU-Turkey relationship suffered from the EUs own inner turmoil since 2005. But the EU

has now ratified the Lisbon Treaty, has begun work on its new structure, and is seeing fears of afinancial meltdown recede. As it regains confidence, it will turn once again to its successful


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strategy of enlargement. Even French media are now suggesting Turkey needs to have a betterdeal. After all, Istanbul is for all practical purposes already both a European metropolis and abooming regional hub. Airline route maps are black with connections between many Turkish

cities and Europe, at the same time as Middle Eastern cities, while well-served, do not support

nearly so much traffic with Turkey. Millions of European tourists come and go every year.

European banks and other brands are high street names all over Turkey, complementing the morethan three million ethnic Turks who live in Europe.

Although EU states may be economic rivals of the US, American officials have for many years

rightly made support of the EU-Turkey convergence the central plank of their Turkey policy. It isa people-to-people relationship that gives flesh to the hard bones of the U.S.-Turkey relationship,

which is much more of a state-to-state, strategic affair. Repairing the EU-Turkey relationship isvital if there is to be any real collaboration between Turkey and NATO. A Turkey empowered bya healthy convergence with the EU is also likely to have much stronger hand as it seeks to build

trust, integration and commercial interaction both with and between the difficult states of the

Middle East.

The EU-Turkey relationship is however about to be ship-wrecked of the divided island of

Cyprus, an outcome that will cripple the whole nexus of issues that Cyprus represents about

Turkeys relationship with the EU. Absent real progress in current reunification talks, the currentpro-settlement Turkish Cypriot president is likely to lose power in April 2010. Unless there is a

breakthrough, this will be not just a slow-burn disaster for the million Greek and Turkish

Cypriots, but it has every chance of poisoning the whole political climate in the easternMediterranean for a decade or more.

The U.S. has so far wisely stayed mostly on the sidelines of the new talks, since interventions by

outside powers are one reason that Greek Cypriots rejected the last best chance of a solution in2004. The key problem is that Turkey and the Greek Cypriots do not talk directly, and therefore

have no trust in each other and cannot see that the other side truly wants and needs a deal. While

recognizing the generally positive contribution of Turkey to make the talks work, the U.S. shouldimpress upon Erdogan that his only chance of reaching a settlement is by reaching out to the

Greek Cypriots. Polls show that Greek Cypriots simply do not believe that Turkey would

implement a deal on the withdrawal of its troops, so Ankara must find a way to convince them of

its good faith. Turkey must be persuaded to act big: the Turks number 75 million people andhave a powerful army occupying the northern third of Cyprus, while the Greek Cypriots are just

800,000 people with only the moral advantage of EU membership.

It is not enough that since 2004 the Turks can justifiably claim to have acted more constructively

than the Greek Cypriots. The U.S. should underline to Erdogan certain facts of life: any

breakdown of talks on the island will effectively mean partition of the island with almost nochance of meaningful recognition of any self-declared Turkish Cypriot state; that this will mean


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the technical freezing of of the EU-Turkey relationship, which, mainly because of Cyprus, hasalready run out of negotiating chapters that it can open; that the law cases relating to Turkishoccupation of property in the European Court of Human Rights will be either saddle Turkey with

a multi-billion dollar burden it cannot afford or put Turkey under sanction from the EHCRsparent organization, the Council of Europe; that if reunification talks are seen to be a pretence,

Turkey will be left exposed as the military occupier of one third of an EU state; that Turkeywould be wise not to react with the deployment of gunboats again if, as is likely, the Greek

Cypriots seek to leverage support from other EU states assert their internationally recognized

rights to an Exclusive Economic Zone around Cyprus, a right contested by Turkey; and that the

sum total of all these dynamics means that Cyprus will drive a deep wedge between Europe andTurkey that will be detrimental to the interests of all. The United States is part of this: past

unfreezing of Turkish-Greek conflicts in the Aegean have all proved the impotence of the EUand required U.S. ambulance diplomacy.

It is perhaps idealistic to suppose that the U.S. side will be able to rise over its urgent

preoccupations with the long-running problems of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iranall problems inwhich Turkey plays important and mostly helpful roles in the transatlantic community that will

clearly need to be discussed. But there is no doubt that progress on Armenia and the EU/Cyprus

agenda need more urgent attention. In the long term, this is what will do the most favors to the

shared U.S. and Turkish hope of a more stable and prosperous region.

The Turkey-Middle Eastern Drift Red Herring

However they are transmitted, the U.S. messages should be founded on an assessment which

startsby heavily discounting the swirling commentaries calling into question Turkeys

relationship with the Middle East, its modernizing ambitions, its interest in the EU andcommitment to NATO, and the nature of its democracy. And, given the damage done to the

relationship by neglect under the previous U.S. administration, any action agreed upon should be

backed up with frequent visits to Ankara by senior American officials.

It is true that Prime Minister Erdogan and his foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu in particular are

interested in creating a new role for Turkey in the Middle East and among other Muslim

countries. One reason is certainly the great interest the Middle Easterners now show in Turkeyssuccessespartly because of its democratic legitimacy and progress in reconciling religion,

ethnicity and patriotism in the national ideology, partly because of the success of Turkish

sitcoms on prime time Arab television and partly because of the way Erdogan has publiclyspoken up for the Palestinians. A much larger reason, however, is the way Turkey has reached

the closest of any large Muslim country to Western standards of prosperity.

Any lingering doubts about Turkeys popularity in the Middle East should be put to rest by


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polling data of more than 2000 respondents in seven key Arab countries published in November.The survey by the reputed Turkey Economic and Social Studies Foudantion (TESEV) showsthat for Arabs and the Arab world Turkey represents a potential model (61%); a successful

integration of Islam and democracy (63%); has a daily growing influence (71%); has the

potential to make intra-Arab peace (76%); should play a bigger role (77%); is a friend of the

respondents Arab government (78%); and should play a mediating role in the Israel-Palestineproblem (79%).

However Erdogan and Davutoglu would do well to take note that 64 per cent of Arabs believe

EU membership makes Turkey is a more convincing partner for the Arab world. Indeed, formany Middle Eastern countries, and even a far-flung Muslim country like Indonesia, it is above

all Turkeys strong recent economic performance that has impressed Muslim countries. And thekey to that prosperity is a huge wave of foreign investment in the mid-2000s, in which EU

countries led the way. This followed Turkeys move to start negotiations on full EU membership,and which signaled that Turkey was heading inexorably towards an era of greater stability and

rule of law. The other leg of international confidence in the country is a sense of continuity and

predictability in Turkeys relationship with the U.S. Therefore, however bitter Prime Minister

Erdogan may be about European negativism, and however hypocritical some Western positions

may be, each time that he gives into the populist temptation to pour scorn on the Western

consensus on Iran, Sudan or Israel, he is sawing off the branch on which Turkey sits.

Even so, the fact is that Erdogans statements are mainly rhetorical. Following in the steps of

Turgut Ozal in the 1980s, his main goal in foreign policy is doing business, namely theencouragement of deals with nearby countries and to support the hundreds of businessmen who

typically travel with him. This is a natural refocusing on Istanbul of regional trade between the

Balkans and Middle East, ending the unnatural hiatus of the Cold War and the iron curtain that

sealed Turkey off from almost all of its historical hinterland. This is a reversion to thegeographical commercial patterns of the Ottoman Empire, or indeed the Byzantine Empire

before it. It has little to do with Islam or neo-Ottomanism. Indeed, the biggest beneficiary has

been trade with Russia, now Turkeys biggest single trading partner, a relationship that inOttoman times was chiefly characterized by a dozen terrible wars. Its worth recalling too thatthe richest part of the Ottoman Empire was not the Middle East, but the Balkans, then known as

Turkey-in-Europe.

There are changes in Turkeys patterns of trade, but they are not surprising. In the last two years

there has been a noticeable fall-off in trade with the EU and growth with the Middle East. But

this has more to do with short-term opportunities created by high oil prices filling MiddleEastern coffers, accompanied by a collapse in European demand due to the financial crisis. There

is no fundamental rush to the East, and roughly half of Turkeys trade remains with EU states as

normal. As the table below shows, Turkeys overall trade with the Middle East or the 57countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference is still lower than it was in the heyday of


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from the U.S.; and with pro-Israel lobbyists to face down Armenian genocide resolutions in theU.S. Congress. Now Turkey has a remarkably close relationship with Syria; is in dispute withIsrael over supplies of military equipment; and it has initiated its own normalization with

Armenia that promises to be the best avenue yet for Armenians and Turks to achieve closure on

the events of 1915. Perhaps most importantly, todays Turkish government now in power is

responsive toand occasionally exploitsa high degree of Turkish public anger about Israelipolicies towards the Palestinians, while back in the 1990s there was a hope that the Oslo process

meant that peace was on its way.

It is also worth noting that there is a different dynamic in Turkey relationship with almost everyMiddle Eastern country, as in the wider region. The bottom line is usually not Islam but is more

about business, and Iran and Sudan have long been discrete areas of interest of fast commercialgrowth to Turkey. What is new, and what has gone wrong is the way Turkey is presenting theserelationships, particularly Prime Minister Erdogan: racing to congratulate Ahmedinejads highlycontested re-election performance, saying that talk of an Iranian nuclear program is gossip and

dismissing International Criminal Court indictments of the regime in Khartoum on the grounds

that no Muslim could commit genocide. The West may not have a clean record on supportingdictators, initiating wars and deploying weapons of mass destruction, but as a practical matter,

Erdogan is unnecessarily feeding arguments to his and Turkeys enemies in key centers in

Washington and Brussels.

Erdogan and Davutoglus new fashion ofappeals to the Middle East on the basis of a supposed

common religious identity is also a double-edged sword in the region. Their misconceivedtalking points about their role as leadersof 1.5 billion Muslims recall to other Middle

Easterners the hegemonic attitudes of Irans early Islamic Republic, are offensive to otherMuslim powers, and do not truly reflect Turkeys broader ambition to integrate with Europe and

be an all-round regional champion. Talk of an Islamic world whether by Erdogan or by criticsin Washingtonis also overblown. Quite apart from a wide variety of ethnic differences,

majorities of Iran and Iraqs populations adhere to two or more varieties of the Shia Muslim rite,

not the Sunni Muslim majority rite of Turkey. The isolated government of Syria, led by membersof the Alawi sect, welcomes the short-term political relief of strategic support from Turkey, but

is already worried that in the long term the current influx of small Turkish businessmen and their

religious organizations could empower the long-oppressed Sunni majority of the country.

To sum up, Turkey is far from heading off for the rogue badlands of the East, as more than one

administration official has privately worried in recent months. In many ways it is a far more

liberal and self-assured country than it was a decade ago. In fact, Erdogan and Davutoglusrecent rhetoric represents a new self-confidence, sometimes bordering on the foolhardy, which

may be disturbing to Washington because it is partly the same self-confidence being displayed

by many regional powers as they move up to fill the space left by a weaker United States.


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In such circumstances, the best partner for the United States to foster is a Turkey integrating withEU norms and standards, just as at heart Turkey should know that its best options are by open-heartedly pursuing the path towards the EUwithout prejudice to the eventual decision in a

decade or two about whether it actually wants to join. It is unlikely to be able to sustain reform

momentum on its own. Just as importantly, any real floating away from its main transatlantic

allies could be extremely damagingmaking its existing dependence on Russian energy into astrategically vulnerability to its northern neighbor, undermining its credibility in financial

centers, and decreasing confidence in Turkeys overall momentum of greater partnership with

the U.S. and Europe.

what obama should say to erdogan hugh pope, bosch public

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