BICOM

Key points

• President Obama’s visit to Turkey backs up his announcement of strong support for Turkish membership of the EU.  This document focuses primarily on the reasons for his visit in terms of the Middle East and its significance for Israel.  That it comes at the outset of Obama’s presidency reflects Ankara’s pivotal importance for maintaining stability in a turbulent region.
• Turkey offers a geopolitical bridge between Western and Islamic societies.  This trip is a statement of Turkey’s centrality to US foreign policy objectives in the Middle East and engagement with the Muslim world.
• Among top priority issues for US-Turkish cooperation in the region are progress towards resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and dealing with Iran’s disputed nuclear weapons programme.
• Israel has long held strong bilateral relations with Turkey – commercially, politically and militarily; Jerusalem hopes that a successful diplomatic visit by the new US president will help recent tension resulting from the Gaza conflict to subside.

Introduction

Barack Obama is in Turkey on the final leg of his first official European trip as US president, where he is due to address the national parliament.  Obama aims to open a fresh chapter in US-Turkey relations.  This would have positive ramifications for the region from Israel’s perspective, not least by providing a boost to a key partner and potential counterweight to Iran’s pursuit of regional supremacy.  This document assesses the underlying purposes of President Obama’s trip to Turkey at this time, and its strategic relevance for Israel.

Why Turkey, and why now?

President Obama’s decision to visit Turkey is carefully calculated diplomacy because of its selection, its sequence and its timing. His choice clearly shows the priority Obama gives to revitalizing Washington’s relations with Ankara. The US and Turkey are long time close allies, but the partnership was damaged by the 2003 Iraq War, which led to record levels of anti-American sentiment among the Turkish public.[i]  The Turks, like much of the world, attach very high hopes to Obama.  Turkish acceptance of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the new NATO Secretary General seems attributable to the US President’s efforts. Fogh is an unpopular figure in the Muslim world since a Danish newspaper caricatured the Prophet Muhammad in 2006, and especially disliked in Turkey because of his opposition to Turkey’s EU accession. 

From a US perspective, Turkey shows a mixed foreign policy record: close ties with Russia and Iran – especially on energy issues – and courting of the Sudanese and Hamas leaderships, have not gone down well in Washington.  But Turkey’s crucial cooperation with the Iraqi Kurds (who feel threatened by Iran and isolated in their own country), and progress towards normalisation with Armenia are viewed positively, both in the US and by the international community at large.

If Ankara’s foreign policy seems somewhat disjointed, it is partly because major social forces, including nationalism and Islamism, are affecting the country’s politics.[ii]  Turkey is an established, modern democracy, whose outlook is shaped both by a strong identification with the West and an important place in the Islamic world. In US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s words, “Turkey, as everyone knows, is a model democracy with a secular constitution that shows Islam can coexist with both.”[iii]  In short, Turkey dispels the notion that Islam and democracy are inherently incompatible, a myth which fuels misunderstanding in the West and alienation in the Arab and Islamic world.  But some observers are concerned about the changing role of Islam in politics in Turkey, and the direction in which Turkey is being led by President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).[iv]  In local elections last week, middle-class voters abandoned the AKP, largely because it has become less tolerant, more corrupt, and generally reluctant to pursue reforms required for fuller European integration.  These issues raise the bar for what is at stake in US-Turkey relations, hence part of the reason for Obama’s keenness to renew them from the outset of his presidency.

A second motivating factor for the Turkey visit is its sequence. Its incorporation into Obama’s European tour, immediately following a major NATO summit, sends a political message: his administration considers Turkey as an unequivocally Western ally, and he wants to encourage its membership of the EU. But with Turkish accession to the EU unresolved, NATO – in which Turkey contributes the  second largest army – remains the most effective multilateral anchor for including Turkey in the Western policy fold.

Finally, because the priorities and substance of Obama’s foreign policy are still being crafted, his decision to go to Turkey so soon into his presidential tenure is especially significant. It demonstrates his view of Ankara’s strategic importance for facilitating a new approach towards the wider region.  It is telling that in a Joint Statement issued by Hillary Clinton and her Turkish counterpart, Ali Babacan, last month, the first policy item to which they referred, in the context of cooperation on regional peace and stability, was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  But there are also huge, shared challenges in Turkey’s Eastern neighbourhood: the volatile South Caucasus; Iran’s nuclear ambitions and destabilising regional influence; Iraqi development; and, further afield, the Afghanistan-Pakistan conundrum.  Obama is keen to stress the regional benefits from close cooperation on a range of security, political and economic challenges.  Key among them will be expanded supply routes for natural energy resources, which would help to hold Russia and Iran in check.

The strategic significance for Israel

Israel will be watching Obama’s Turkey visit very closely. Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognise Israel in 1949, and Israel does not underestimate the importance of such a significant ally in the Islamic world.  Whilst relations have ebbed and flowed over the years, bilateral ties were strengthened by common strategic outlooks of the post-Cold War Middle East.[v]  For nearly twenty years, Israeli-Turkish relations have been characterised by substantive commercial and political ties and, above all, close cooperation between the two countries’ security and defence establishments. The two countries have agreements on a range of security related issues, including intelligence sharing and military technology. As such, Israel has a clear and direct interest in Obama’s diplomatic accomplishments with Turkey on his current trip.

Jerusalem and Ankara’s strategic partnership is partly grounded in similar perceptions of regional threats, in particular the threats of extremism and terrorism.[vi]  Israel would like Turkey to offer a progressive alternative to Iran – the other non-Arab Muslim country in the region. Hillary Clinton has acknowledged a role for Turkey in Washington’s new strategy of engaging Iran.[vii]  According to the Turkish foreign minister, Turkey is not operating as a formal mediator, but his officials are working to create “better understanding” as the US and Iran try to resolve the nuclear dispute.[viii]  Meanwhile, Israel wants to see a Turkey strong enough to contain Iran’s expansionist aspirations, and bold enough to use its new UN Security Council membership to take a firmer line against the Islamic Republic.

Turkey’s potential to play a constructive bridging role was clearly demonstrated in the last year when it mediated a series of indirect talks between Israel and Syria. Turkey’s regional activism and status are greater today than in the past, a trend which Israel generally sees as helpful. 

While Turkey and Israel share many common interests, there are sources of tension. With regard to the Palestinian arena, Israel has been concerned about Turkey’s contacts with the leadership of Hamas since it took power in Gaza. Israel is circumspect about what can be gained from Turkish relations with what it (and many Arab states) views as a problematic non-state actor. Israel also shares concerns that have been mooted about the ruling AKP party.  In particular, their active endorsement of anti-Semitic propaganda in Istanbul during the Gaza war, and an unsavoury cartoon exhibition in the Taksim Square train station in its aftermath, are disturbing. 

But despite these issues, it is significant that both Ankara and Jerusalem have sought to downplay any sense of a crisis following the incident in Davos in January, when Erdogan stormed out of a discussion forum with Shimon Peres about the conflict with Hamas, and a senior IDF officer’s publicly criticised Turkish foreign policy. The overall view from Israel’s perspective is that if Ankara can be included in Washington’s Middle East policy framework, and act together with Obama, this would be to Israel’s benefit and that of moderate Arab states in the neighbourhood.

Conclusion

Turkey’s unique geopolitical and cultural position, joining Europe and Central Asia, the West and the Islamic world, give it a prominent role in helping the US to advance many of its regional goals. As a joint US-Turkish communiqué issued in March made clear, this includes the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict.[ix]  President Obama’s decision to go to Turkey at the outset of his administration clearly demonstrates the value he places in Ankara’s strategic importance for facilitating his new approach towards the wider Middle East.

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[i] Nasuh Uslu, Metin Toprak, Ibrahim Dalmis, and Ertan Aydin, ‘Turkish Public Opinion Toward The United States In The Context Of The Iraq Question’, The Middle East Review of International Affairs, (9: 3), September 2005.

[ii] See Soner Cagaptay (2006), “Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who Is a Turk?” (Routledge).  Cagaptay is Director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

[iii] David McKeeby, ‘Obama Adds Turkey to Upcoming European Tour’, U.S. State Department, 1 April 2009.

[iv] See, for instance, Soner Cagaptay, ‘In the name of Islam: a liberal appeal’, Middle East Strategy at Harvard, 30 March 2009; Gil Feiler and Edo Harel, ‘The Political Logic of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s Attacks on Israel’, The Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, 4 February 2009.

[v] For further reading, see Efraim Inbar, ‘The Resilience of Israel-Turkish Relations’, Israel Affairs (11:4), October 2005.

[vi] Speech by H.E. Nuzhet Kandemir, http://www.naqshbandi.org/ottomans/modern/speech_by.htm

[vii] ‘Turkish FM: Turkey trying to ease U.S.-Iran tension’, Reuters, 8 March 2009.

[viii] ibid.

[ix] Joint Statement by Turkey and the United States of America on the Occasion of the Visit of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Upon the Invitation of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey Ali Babacan, 7 March 2009.