Turkey and the West Clash, Pleasing Russia and Iran
Ankara’s ties with the U.S. and other NATO allies are badly frayed
By Yaroslav Trofimov
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Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a September news conference. Photo: MIKHAIL METZEL/TASS/ZUMA PRESS
ISTANBUL—Here’s one measure of where Turkey stands in today’s world.
Russian and Iranian citizens are free to enter the country without a visa. Americans, following the recent spat over the detention of a U.S. consulate employee, are essentially barred from traveling to their fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally.
The unfolding breakup between Turkey and the U.S. goes far beyond that dispute. It is fueled by increasing frustration on both sides—and is encouraged by countries most interested in such a separation, especially Russia and Iran. Even in the Syrian war, Turkey now has found itself in a new convergence of aims with Moscow and Tehran—and opposing American goals.
“This is the worst it’s been since the independence of the Turkish republic,” in 1923, said Asli Aydintasbas, an Istanbul-based fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The institutional bond [with the U.S.] is really weakening and the distrust is spilling into business ties, into investment decisions, and even into the NATO framework.”
The freeze isn’t just between Washington and Ankara: Turkey’s relations with key European nations, most notably Germany, have frayed just as badly.
Turkey’s traditional alliance with the U.S. already came under strain during President Barack Obama’s administration. At the time, the U.S. chafed at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s systematic assault on democratic freedoms and civil rights. Turkey, meanwhile, viewed as an existential threat America’s support for Kurdish militias that combat Islamic State in northern Syria.
Following a failed military coup against Mr. Erdogan last year, many senior Turkish officials have also concluded that elements of the U.S. establishment were sympathetic to the plotters’ aims or even actively colluding with the putsch, a claim firmly denied by Washington.
Mr. Erdogan, however, entertained high hopes for a reset under President Donald Trump, who refused to criticize Turkey’s deteriorating human-rights record. These expectations seemed to be validated as recently as Sept. 21, when Mr. Trump proclaimed at a meeting in New York that Turkey and the U.S. are “as close as we have ever been” and Mr. Erdogan reciprocated by praising “my dear friend Donald.”
President Donald Trump shook hands with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in New York in September. Photo: SHEELAH CRAIGHEAD/PLANET PIX/ZUMA PRESS
Such optimism, however, belied the accumulating poison in the relationship. In Syria, instead of reversing course as Ankara had expected, the Trump administration essentially doubled down on the Obama policy of arming and backing the YPG Kurdish militia that Turkey considers a front for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a group that seeks to carve out a Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey and that is considered terrorist by Washington and Ankara alike.
Ankara was also upset with the detention of Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian businessman with ties to Mr. Erdogan who has been charged in New York with violating sanctions against Iran, and with the continuing presence in Pennsylvania of Fethullah Gulen, the Islamist preacher whom Turkey wants extradited for allegedly masterminding last year’s coup attempt. Both men have denied wrongdoing.
American officials, meanwhile, were frustrated by the yearlong detention of Andrew Brunson, an American Christian pastor whom Turkish officials have accused of links to the coup. Mr. Brunson has denied the charges. The U.S. officials were particularly horrified by recent Turkish suggestions of swapping Mr. Brunson for Mr. Gulen or Mr. Zarrab.
All of this, combined with uproar over the allegedly violent behavior of Mr. Erdogan’s bodyguards during his visit to Washington in May, has cemented a growing perception inside the administration—and Congress—that attempts to mollify Turkey have become increasingly pointless.
“Ankara has few, if any, friends in Washington now,” said Steven Cook, a Turkey expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
The detention of the U.S. consulate employee helped ignite the latest conflagration.
“The arrest has raised questions about whether the goal of some officials is to disrupt the longstanding cooperation between Turkey and the United States,” said the U.S. ambassador to Ankara, John Bass. The tit-for-tat visa issuance suspension means that only a small number of Americans with pre-existing Turkish visas can enter the country. U.S. citizens were until now able to get Turkish visas on arrival.
Ever since last year’s coup attempt, Turkish officials favorable to continuing cooperation with the West have been warning about the rise of the ultranationalist “Eurasianist” faction, particularly inside Turkey’s security and military establishment. This current, expounded by its main ideologue Dogu Perincek, a Turkish politician, seeks to reposition Turkey into a new “Eurasian” civilizational alliance with Russia, China and Iran—and to break off traditional bonds with West.
That breakoff intensified as Mr. Erdogan declared that the U.S. consulate in Istanbul was “infiltrated by spies,” and, in a fiery speech Thursday, warned the U.S. that if America doesn’t respect Turkey, “then we don’t need you.”
In a separate case this week, a Turkish court declared a Wall Street Journal reporter guilty of engaging in terrorist propaganda through one of her Journal articles. The Journal condemned the move and the reporter plans to appeal the decision.
“This was an unfounded criminal charge and wildly inappropriate conviction that wrongly singled out a balanced Wall Street Journal report,” said Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Gerard Baker. “The sole purpose of the article was to provide objective and independent reporting on events in Turkey, and it succeeded.”
It is hard to see what avenues still exist for defusing the tensions between Washington and Ankara. The fates of Mr. Zarrab and Mr. Gulen are “judicial issues the U.S. government has no say in,” said James Jeffrey, a former American ambassador in Turkey. “President Erdogan’s advisers are misleading him if they think otherwise.”
Things are likely to get even worse in the foreseeable future, added Sinan Ulgen, head of the Edam think tank in Istanbul and a former Turkish diplomat. “There is no clear path to de-escalation,” he cautioned, “and therefore we will likely find ourselves on the path to escalation.”
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