Trump’s
Turkey honeymoon sours in days
Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan issued an early invitation to the new president. His
prime minister over the weekend blasted the ‘Muslim ban.’
By ZIA
WEISE 1/30/17, 4:39 AM CET
ISTANBUL —
Consensus is rare in Turkey’s fractured society. But when Donald
Trump won the U.S. elections, Turks across the political spectrum
agreed: The new American president and Turkey’s ruler Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan would get along just fine.
How short that
lasted. Erdoğan and his supporters have gone from confidence
bordering on giddiness about the prospects for Turkish-American
relations to disillusionment in less than a week of Trump in the
White House.
Only weeks ago,
government supporters pointed out with satisfaction that Trump had
defeated his country’s old elites at the ballot box, just as
Erdoğan did 15 years earlier. Government critics saw the
similarities as well between, in their view, two thin-skinned
populists with a penchant for lawsuits who were likely to see
eye-to-eye.
Erdoğan
congratulated Trump on his electoral victory, insisting that the
president ought to visit Turkey “as soon as possible.” Ministers
expressed hope for closer relations; ties between Ankara and
Washington had become strained under the Obama administration.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric was written off as
campaign talk.
As Trump makes good
on his pledges, the honeymoon is coming to an early end. “We are
waiting to see what Mr. Trump will say about the Middle East,”
Erdoğan told reporters last week. “At the moment, some language
about the Middle East is reaching our ear, and it is frankly
disturbing.”
While Erdoğan did
not elaborate, he was not alone in expressing his dismay with the new
administration. When Trump forged ahead with his “Muslim ban,”
suspending visas for those born in seven Muslim-majority nations,
Turkish ministers were quick to criticize the order.
“Regional issues
cannot be solved by closing the doors on people,” said Binali
Yıldırım, Turkey’s prime minister, at a press conference with
his British counterpart Theresa May on Saturday. “You can build a
wall. But it’s not a solution. That wall will come down like the
Berlin Wall.”
Short honeymoon
Disagreement was
probably inevitable. Turkey’s ruling party is rooted in Islamism
and prides itself on giving a voice to religious conservatives.
Erdoğan likes to cast himself as a representative and protector of
Sunni Muslims across the Middle East; Ankara hosts exiled members of
the Syrian opposition and various rebel groups, as well as Hamas and
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
During the campaign
period, the Turkish government was less supportive of Trump than
strongly opposed to Hillary Clinton, who was perceived as a threat to
Turkey’s interests.
Trump, on the other
hand, hit out at Muslims and Islam throughout his campaign, proposing
not only a “Muslim ban” but also a “Muslim registry.” Over
the summer, Erdoğan called for the Republican nominee’s name to be
removed from Istanbul’s Trump Towers. Apart from that, barely a
word of criticism was heard in Ankara’s corridors of power.
During the campaign
period, the Turkish government was less supportive of Trump than
strongly opposed to Hillary Clinton, who was perceived as a threat to
Turkey’s interests. The Democratic nominee’s firm support for the
Syrian Kurdish YPG militia put her at odds with Ankara. The YPG,
widely regarded as the most efficient force in the fight against the
Islamic State, has ties to the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish
state.
On top of that,
Clinton’s campaign received donations from supposed supporters of
Fethullah Gülen, the Pennsylvania-based cleric accused of
masterminding an attempt to overthrow Erdoğan’s government last
summer. Followers of Gülen have been the target of a sweeping purge
in Turkey, with tens of thousands detained since the failed coup.
Gülen and U.S.
support for Syrian Kurds had already soured relations under Obama’s
administration. Turkish ministers’ calls for the extradition of
Gülen fell on deaf ears in Washington, fueling frustration in
Ankara. Turkey also repeatedly condemned what it saw as “support
for terror,” fretting that the international community’s
endorsement of the YPG would bolster the PKK’s demands for autonomy
in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast.
“The optimism
toward Trump was a reaction to the approach of the Obama
administration during the last month of his term,” said Özgür
Ünlühisarcıklı, who heads the Ankara office of the German
Marshall Fund, a Washington-based think tank. “They thought that
the Clinton administration would be a direct continuation of the
Obama administration. They hoped that relations would improve under
Trump.”
Early signs were
promising. Turkish ministers applauded the election results; the
pro-government press heaped praise on Trump. There was a palpable
sense of schadenfreude that the Republican nominee had persevered
despite “opposition” from the press. The minister for justice,
Bekir Bozdağ, declared: “The American people said no to their will
being manipulated.”
Mike Pompeo, the new
CIA director, declared Turkey a “totalitarian Islamist
dictatorship” in a now-deleted tweet.
Shortly after the
election, Erdoğan called anti-Trump protests “a disrespect to
democracy.” Trump, in turn, reportedly told Erdoğan that his
daughter Ivanka admired him. The Turkish president also lauded
Trump’s approach to the press: After Trump lashed out at a CNN
reporter during a press conference, labeling the broadcaster “fake
news,” Erdoğan commended him for putting the journalist “in his
place.” (Turkey currently jails more journalists than any other
nation.)
Trump even appeared
to lend his support to a plan long supported by Ankara to set up
“safe zones” within Syria for refugees fleeing the violence.
“Ankara’s
initial optimism is now giving way to cynicism,” said
Ünlühisarcıklı. “Turkey is puzzled — OK, a security zone, but
what kind of security zone? Ankara is concerned it could be
established in Kurdish areas, supporting the Kurds’ argument for
autonomy.”
Ünlühisarcıklı
warned that Turkey might be setting itself up for disappointment.
Ankara’s hopes that Trump might speed up Gülen’s extraditions
will likely amount to nothing, given that the cleric’s case is a
matter for the U.S. judiciary.
Whether Trump will
continue Obama’s support for the YPG is uncertain; Yıldırım and
other ministers have expressed hope that the new administration would
“bring an end to this shame” of supplying the YPG with weapons.
Yet during his confirmation hearings, Trump’s pick for secretary of
state, Rex Tillerson, named the Kurdish militia as the West’s
greatest ally in the fight against the Islamic State. (In 2011, when
he was head of Exxon Mobil, the company signed a contract to drill
for oil in Iraqi Kurdistan not with the central Iraqi government in
Baghdad, but with the Kurds.)
Other officials
brought in by Trump may also spell trouble for Washington’s
relationship with Turkey. Mike Pompeo, the new CIA director, declared
Turkey a “totalitarian Islamist dictatorship” in a now-deleted
tweet. Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, called
Turkey a “source of stability” — but a video filmed during the
night of July’s coup attempt shows him cheering on the plotters
trying to overthrow Erdoğan.
As initial
excitement over Trump’s election recedes, Ankara is beginning to
grasp what the new administration might have in store for the Middle
East. Conservative columnists were enraged at the suggestion to move
the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, an order that
could provoke unrest in the region. Reports that Trump is considering
designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group are unlikely
to have gone down well in Ankara, either.
Nor has Trump’s
rhetoric of linking Islam to terrorism gone unnoticed. In his
inauguration speech, Trump pledged to “eradicate” what he sees as
“radical Islamic terrorism.” Ankara took note: “The predominant
feature of the new administration is that it has developed a
generalist and prejudiced approach to the Islamic world,” wrote a
columnist for the pro-government Yeni Şafak newspaper.
Obama refused to
speak of “Islamic terrorism” to avoid associating the religion
with violence — something that Erdoğan, who is known to despise
this phrase, may have appreciated.
“Obama was very
sensitive toward Muslims’ feelings. That’s not what Trump is
doing. Trump is equating Islam with terrorism,” said Kemal Kirişci,
a Turkey expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “In
retrospect,” he added, “Turkey may come to miss Obama.”
Authors:
Zia Weise
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