The U.S.-Turkey relationship has a history of ups and downs. Despite decades of alliance which began with the Korean War in the Cold War era, coined with NATO membership in 1952, and continued through the wars since 9/11, relations between the two countries have never been free of tension. But today, America’s relations with one of its most important military partnerships have hit a historic low. The US secretary of State acknowledged during his visit to Ankara on February 16 said that his country's relationship with Turkey is at " a crisis point", as his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, demanded that the United States "turn words into actions" to resolve their differences in dealing with the Syrian crisis which has brought the two NATO allies close to confrontation on the battlefield.
Although the deterioration in relations appear to have happened over night, under the surface are sticking points that have been chipping away at the alliance for years.
THE COLD WAR
Turkey's association with the United States began in 1947 when the United States Congress designated Turkey, under the provisions of the Truman Doctrine, as the recipient of special economic and military assistance intended to help repel direct threats from the Soviet Union.
This Soviet threat on Turkey became official in 1945 when the soviets handed Turkey a note demanding a military base in the Bosporus and land from Eastern Anatolia. This marked the deterioration of the relationship between the Soviet Union and Turkey. As the Turkish government would not submit to the Soviet Union's requests, tensions arose in the region, leading to a show of naval force on the side of the Soviets. The tensions caused Turkey to turn to turn to the United States and NATO, for protection and membership, respectively.
In support of the overall United States Cold War strategy, Turkey contributed three Turkish brigades to the UN forces in the Korean War (1950-53), joined NATO in 1952, became a founding member of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) collective defense pact established in 1955, and endorsed the principles of the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Turkey generally cooperated with other United States allies in the Middle East to contain the influence of those countries regarded as Soviet clients. Total delivered U.S. military assistance to Turkey between 1948 to 1964 came to $2,271 million, plus $328 million in deliveries of surplus equipment. Meanwhile, Western economic aid to Turkey between 1950 and 1962 totaled around $1,380 million, of which the vast majority came from the United States.
Their mutual interest in containing Soviet expansion provided the foundation of strategic partnership between the United States-Turkish relations for the next forty years. But a myth surrounds U.S.-Turkey relations which suggests that the US and Ankara worked closely and with not much friction throughout the decades.But close as this relationship was, it was hardly ever smooth.
For example, the US’s policy to shift NATO’s defense strategy from massive retaliation to flexible response despite heavy criticism by Turkish politicians, newspaper columnists, academics and retired military officer was one of the issues of contention between the two countries. The US’s secret agreement with the Soviet Union to withdraw US nuclear missiles from Turkey without consulting Ankara in return for withdrawal of missiles in Cuba was another issue that created tensions between the two countries. With this move, the Turkish foreign policy establishment understood that Turkey needed diversification of its foreign policy, including finding new ways to develop friendships outside the Western world, like with its Middle Eastern neighbors.
Tensions only mounted over Cyprus in the 1960s with the Johnson administration and again in the early 1970s, when, after Turkey’s invasion of the island in response to a Greek-led coup that Ankara believed placed the minority Turkish Cypriots in danger, the US placed an arms embargo on its NATO ally.
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Greece And Turkey Join Nato. October 22Nd 1952.(Getty)[/caption]POST-COLD WAR
The end of the Cold War forced Turkish leaders to reassess their country's international position. The fading of the Soviet threat and the view of being excluded from Europe created a sense of weakness with respect to Turkey's position in the rapidly changing global political environment. For over 40 years Turkey’s strategic relationship with the Americans and its membership in NATO had provided the country with a security umbrella, military assistance and a strong institutional and practical link with the Western world and Turkey did not wish to see any of these diminish. It participated in the Gulf War (1991) because then-president, Turgut Ozal (1983-1993),, believed that Turkey’s future security depended on the continuation of close ties with the US although this was at odds with the traditional cautious Turkish policy of no interference in inter-Arab affairs and the fact the country’s ties economic ties with Iraq were extensive.
But the 1990s proved to be an important period of change for Turkey, with a mixed effect on its ties with the US. In the of a rapidly changing international landscape, Turkey believed that it was no longer limited in the Western camp and the defender of NATO’s southern flank. As a result of the reforms passed during the Turgut Özal era ,which the US supported, the country liberalized its market internally while opening up its economy, thus laying out the foundations of a new, multidirectional, regional integration. This led to a renewed interest in European integration but also to establishing links with countries in Turkey’s rediscovered southern and eastern neighbourhoods, which in some cases happened to be in America’s ‘black list’, such as Iran.
Clashes with the Kurds, moreover, intensified and Islamist movements rose to political prominence, risking undermining Turkey’s secular identity. Particularly troublesome for Washington was Turkey’s inclination in the 1990s to interpret its newly-found active regional role as requiring confrontation with its neighbours in some cases. Growing tensions with Greece in the mid-to- late 1990s were viewed with great alarm as they could lead to open conflict between two US allies in the already conflict-ridden Balkans. Turkey’s strains with Syria, which led to a showdown in 1998 that stopped just short of war, caused great concern for their possible broader regional ramifications. (Turkey’s Global Strategy Report, London School of Economics)
‘THE NEW TURKEY’
The 2000s brought with them a set of new challenges for Turkish-US relations. America supported the single most important societal and political development taking place in Turkey: the rise of the post-Islamist, culturally conservative, market-oriented Justice and Development Party (AKP). Recep Tayip Erdogan, one of the founders of AKP, was received in Washington in 2002 and met with President Bush while he was still a relatively unknown international figure before he became the country’s Prime Minister in 2003.
The idea that as a secular democracy, ruled by a moderate Islamic party, Turkey could be a vital ally in the war on terror and could boost America’s efforts to implement a new agenda of change in the Middle East post 9/11, was appealing to the US. However, after the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s ‘no’ vote to logistical support to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, relations grew tense.
Ankara’s growing inclination was to distinguish itself from US policies in the region. This led to decisions that have created significant disagreement with Washington, such as Ankara’s engagement with Hamas and the move from confrontation to cooperation with Syria in the 2000s (when Washington was on the contrary trying to isolate Damascus). The debate in the US increasingly revolved around the question of Turkey’s ‘drift’ from the West. Although the disagreement over the handling of Iraq had ceased to be an issue by the time the Bush administration finished its second term, both Turkish and US leaders could agree that the relationship needed a major overhaul if levels of strategic convergence similar to the one achieved during the Cold War were to be ever attained again. (Turkey’s global strategy report, London School of Economics)
THE OBAMA ERA
The Obama administration sought a ‘model partnership’ with Ankara (Obama, 2009). The president’s first visit to a Muslim country was to Turkey and it was regarded as a welcome development among the Turkish public and policymakers. Obama regarded Erdogan as “a man of principle, and also a man of action,” Tom Donilon, the president’s former national security adviser, said in 2011. The leaders of both countries improved the level of communication and cooperation on regional issues but relations became strained because of simmering disagreements over how to solve major problems they worked together to confront.
For instance, the question on how to deal with Iran, specifically Turkey’s vote in 2010 against a U.S.-initiated United Nations Security Council resolution on new sanctions and instead deciding to cultivate its economic relationship with Iran and embracing an open-ended dialogue with the regime, caused a major rift. Tensions deepened further following the Gaza flotilla incident in the same year.
Much of the initial optimism that was created following Obama’s bilateral visit to Turkey was dented further due to disagreements over the Arab uprisings. The most prominent being their reactions to the toppling of the Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi who Erdogan supported and had friendly relations with the ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their divergence in their approach regarding the level of military engagement and choice of partners on the ground in the Syrian crisis.
While both sides agreed that Assad must go, they disagreed on how it would happen, with the Obama administration rejecting Ankara's suggestions for a bolder, more decisive role in Syria and beyond. Erdogan also resisted steps the US insisted are crucial to defeating ISIS, like sealing Turkey’s border. But at the heart of the matter is U.S. support for Syrian Kurds fighting ISIS. The U.S. relies on Kurdish militants in Syria as its most effective ally in the fight but Erdogan views the Kurdish forces as terrorists because of their ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is waging a fight for autonomy against security forces in southeastern Turkey. Turkey’s top priority in Syria became preventing the YPG from achieving its broader political objective: the connection of three northern Syrian cantons into a single autonomous Kurdish region, which Ankara feared could result in an independence bid or be used as a staging area for attacks on Turkey. Their fears of violence are not unfounded: in 2016 alone, far more Turks were killed in mass casualty attacks by the PKK (and its affiliates) than by ISIS.
THE FAILED COUP ATTEMPT
On July 15, 2016, Turkey was rocked by an attempted coup. A faction of the Turkish military bombed government buildings, blocked roads and bridges and attempted to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The coup attempt was quelled by the next day — but Turkey has been feeling the repercussions ever since and it took relations between the US and Turkey from uneasy and challenging to difficult and strained. Ankara believes that the operation was directed by Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic scholar in his late 70s living in exile in the US. The government has declared Gulen's movement, which claims millions of followers in Turkey and around the world, a terrorist organization. The US has denied repeated requests for Gulen's extradition, citing a need for evidence of his involvement in the coup. According to MAK research, 70 percent of the Turkish public believes that the United States was behind the coup. Some ruling elites even see the United States as the “mastermind” orchestrating a conspiracy with different tools to prevent the rise of a “great Turkey.”
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Turkish cleric and opponent to the Erdogan regime Fethullah Gülen adresses at his residence in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania on July 18, 2016 allegations by the Turkish government about his involvement in the attempted July 15 coup. (Getty) [/caption]Things escalated in early October 2017 after the arrests of two US consulate employees by the Turkish government on charges that they had been involved in the coup attempt led to a sudden diplomatic breakdown between the two countries. First, the US suspended non-immigration visa services for Turkish citizens. Immediately afterwards, Turkey suspended all visa services for US citizens. In December, both countries lifted a three-month visa ban. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim lauded the decision at the time, saying the move was a “positive” step toward repairing fraying U.S-Turkish ties.
PRESIDENT TRUMP
Turkey was optimistic about Donald Trump’s presidency, given his rejection of the policies of his predecessor whom Erdogan came to loathe. There was also hope among Turkish officials that Trump would be more sympathetic to the situation with the Fethullah Gulen but the Trump administration has not deviated from Obama’s refusal to send Gulen back to Turkey without adhering to a formal extradition process, or other policies toward Turkey. Trump also signed off on the State Department’s recommendation to stop processing visas for Turks.
Optimism of strengthened relations took another plunge after bodyguards of Erdogan beat and kicked protesters, including American citizens, during his visit to Washington in May 2017. Both governments summoned the other’s ambassadors to issue protests over the incident outside the residence of the Turkish envoy in Washington.
The U.S. policy of working with the YPG began under Obama and continued with Trump, but in 2018, the policy changed. Erdogan largely tolerated American support for the YPG in the counter-ISIS campaign—but with red lines. He opposed any direct arming of the YPG. The U.S. military addressed this by providing mission-specific supplies to the YPG’s Syrian Arab partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). But in January 2018, U.S.-Turkey tensions rose to unprecedented levels when American military officials announced plans to train a 30,000 strong “border security force” with a significant YPG component to be deployed along the Turkish border. Ankara interpreted these plans as American security guarantees for a YPG-controlled region. The State Department attempted to ease predictable Turkish fury. After a meeting with Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said “some people misspoke” and clarified that the United States intends only “to ensure that local elements are providing security to liberated areas.”
On January 20, the Turkish military launched Operation Olive Branch, with Moscow’s acquiescence, against Russian-supported YPG forces in the Afrin region of northwestern Syria. Its stated objectives include safeguarding Turkey’s border, countering U.S. support for a terrorist organization, blocking the YPG from reaching the eastern Mediterranean and cutting off Turkey’s geographical contact with the Arab world, and ensuring the Turkish-supported Syrian opposition controls a 10,000 square kilometer area. The Turkish government threatened to expand this operation 100 kilometers east to Manbij, which risks direct contact with American soldiers and U.S.-backed YPG fighters there. A protracted operation could also detract attention from the final stages of the counter-ISIS campaign.
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Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump wait for a meeting at the Palace Hotel during the 72nd United Nations General Assembly September 21, 2017 in New York City. (Getty)[/caption]Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's Feb. 16 visit to Ankara somewhat improved relations with Turkey. During Tillerson's visit, the United States acknowledged Turkey’s security concerns and agreed to form a committee to find a joint solution, which no doubt contributed to the optimistic mood. The ministers agreed to set up "mechanisms" to settle a slew of disputes between their two countries. Their "priority" will be diffusing tensions surrounding the town of Manbi. "We are not going to act alone any longer, not the U.S. doing one thing, Turkey doing another," Tillerson said at a joint press conference in Ankara. "We will work together ... we have good mechanisms on how we can achieve this, there is a lot of work to be done," he said. Tillerson also said Syria and the U.S. had "precisely the same" objectives for the conflict in Syria, namely defeating ISIS, stabilizing the war-torn country, and creating a unified and democratic nation. "We are agreed on normalizing relations again," Cavusoglu said at the press conference, adding that Washington-Ankara ties were at a "critical phase."
America’s three most senior national security officials, US National Security Advisor, H.R McMaster, Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, and Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, engaged with their Turkish counterparts in the same week. The fact that key elements of the government are intent on improving relations with Turkey despite the thicket of competing interests that characterize their history sends a strong signal about the seriousness with which the United States takes this relationship.
