Erdogan’s Post-Western Turkey

No one campaigns quite like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Months before Turkey’s May 2023 elections, Erdogan unveiled his campaign slogan, “The Century of Turkey,” in front of a live audience of thousands. The spectacle included an orchestra and a chorus performing a theme song that included a rapped verse:

I was a bird with a broken wing

I stayed silent for 100 years

But enough, enough, don’t be quiet

Live free, always free!

The refrain went, “Let the Century of Turkey start—not tomorrow, today!” To cap it all off, Erdogan delivered a typically bombastic speech. Describing some of his domestic policies—such as converting Istanbul’s iconic Byzantine church, the Hagia Sophia, into a mosque—as “challenging global hegemony,” Erdogan vowed to make Turkey “among the top ten [countries] in the world in politics, economy, technology, and diplomacy.”

The show was meant to channel Erdogan’s vision of the Turkish republic in its centennial year: a rising power on the verge of peace and prosperity that has emerged victorious from its many battles with imperialists and is finally ready to take its rightful place as a global power. In this imagining, with Erdogan at the helm, Turkey’s decades-long search for an identity has ended. It is a post-Western power, no longer seeking approval from the West, no longer aspiring to Western liberal ideals, and no longer reliant on the West.

In pre-Erdogan Turkey, Turkey’s transatlantic identity was cherished and upheld, not only as a geopolitical necessity but also as a legacy of Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who said that attaining “the level of contemporary civilization” was the young republic’s mission, a goal that led to a decades-long, top-down push for modernization and Westernization. Today, however, hardly anyone in the public domain defends Western ideas or institutions. Television commentators and politicians routinely lump together the United States, Europe, and NATO and deride all of them as hypocritical, exploitative, and bent on the subjugation of Turkey. Pro-Western Turkish liberals have been kicked off nighttime television shows and removed from newspaper op-ed pages. Turkey has even left the Eurovision Song Contest—the kitschy, pan-European music event that has been running since 1956.

A similar shift is underway in Turkey’s foreign policy. In the decades after World War II, Turkey tried to shield itself from the ever-present threat of Soviet expansionism by anchoring itself in Euro-Atlantic institutions and trying to catch up with the advanced and prosperous Western democracies. Washington viewed Turkey in Cold War terms, as a useful frontier state in the fight against communism and Soviet influence. Turkey was never fully Western or democratic. But during the Cold War period, the fact that the country’s secular elites wanted to anchor the country to the West was good enough for U.S. policymakers.

Today, the picture is very different. Since Erdogan took power in 2002, and particularly since the failed coup attempt against his government in 2016, Washington’s relationship with Ankara has steadily worsened. It is now less healthy than the relationships the United States has with many non-NATO powers. Turkish politicians, including Erdogan, often angrily characterize the United States as an adversary rather than as a partner. When Washington imposed sanctions on Turkey in 2020 for buying S-400 surface-to-air missile systems from Russia, for example, Erdogan called the U.S. decision “a blatant attack” on Turkish sovereignty, and claimed that “the purpose [of the sanctions] is to block the steps our country has undertaken in [the] defense industry, and keep us subordinate.” Meanwhile, in Washington, some U.S. policymakers openly question Turkey’s commitment to NATO and fear that Ankara is growing closer to Moscow.

But this mutual anger has recently begun to cool into something akin to acceptance. Turkish officials now understand that their divergence from NATO is not an anomalous digression but a final destination. Erdogan’s Turkey operates on the premise that the West is in decline and that a multipolar world is emerging, which ostensibly provides openings for Turkey’s rise to great-power status. But Turkey does not want to switch camps by drifting away from NATO and toward the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Eurasian defense and security organization formed in 2001 by China and Russia in a bid to rival NATO. Instead, Turkey wants to keep a foot in each camp while expanding its sway in the Middle East and Central Asia and its economic power more broadly. Even though Erdogan is seeking a clear break with the West when it comes to ideology, culture, and identity, he is also trying to carry out a carefully calibrated balancing act among the great powers, hoping to find more opportunities in which Turkey can exercise influence.

The United States cannot reverse the flow of history and reintegrate Turkey into the West or the EU. Turkey’s bid for EU membership is not just moribund; it is dead. The days when a U.S. president could stand next to Turkish leaders and preach about human rights are over. Washington, however, can still build an effective relationship with the post-Western state that Turkey has become. Ankara may be far from an ideal ally, and it will not be moved by appeals to shared values or the importance of what Washington considers a rules-based international order. But Erdogan’s pragmatism, regional ambitions, and transactionalism make a productive relationship possible.

BEST FRENEMIES

In essence, the Biden administration’s Turkey strategy has been to keep a polite distance from Ankara. This has meant reducing the frequency of presidential diplomacy that characterized much of the Trump era, often to the detriment of relations. For the most part, Biden’s approach has worked well, lowering expectations on both sides and papering over differences. The administration has maintained links with Turkey, but only on issues of immediate importance, such as the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the deal between Russia and Ukraine that allowed the latter to ship grain via the Black Sea. Erdogan played a key role in the deal by convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow grain shipments out of the Ukrainian port of Odessa—for a year, at least. As a Putin whisperer, Erdogan was relevant.

But U.S.-Turkish cooperation on broader geopolitical challenges has been low key or nonexistent. And the Biden administration remains quietly concerned about Turkey’s assertive regional approach, especially its threats to launch an incursion into Syria to attack U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militias, which Ankara views as an extension of the PKK, the pro-independence Kurdish faction that both Turkey and the United States classify as a terrorist organization. Also of concern are Ankara’s escalation of its war of words with Greece over maritime borders and Turkey’s strong support for Azerbaijan’s military campaign against Armenia, which alarmed Washington because it opened up the possibility of another full-scale conflict practically next door to the war in Ukraine.

The U.S.-Turkish relationship looks more like an amicable divorce than mutually beneficial cooperation.

But Washington has shown restraint in its response to these moves in order to avoid sparking a showdown. As part of its détente with the Biden administration, Ankara, too, has curbed its “gunboat diplomacy” in the eastern Mediterranean by pausing energy exploration off the coast of Cyprus and dialing down tensions over Cypriot drilling in contested waters. Turkey has been cautious not to directly target U.S. forces or installations in Syria and has begrudgingly abided by a 2019 agreement with Washington that delineated Kurdish-controlled and Turkish-controlled territorial zones. And despite widespread anti-Americanism among the Turkish public, Erdogan has largely avoided direct confrontation with the Biden administration.

But distance doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder, and the U.S.-Turkish cold peace looks more like an amicable divorce than mutually beneficial cooperation. Meanwhile, in the past decade, the Russian-Turkish relationship has generally thrived and has so far survived the stress test imposed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Erdogan has refrained from any direct criticism of Russian atrocities and has often backed Moscow’s narrative that the West provoked the invasion of Ukraine. “I can clearly say that I do not find the attitude of the West [toward Russia] right,” Erdogan said in September 2022. Turkey has refused to comply with sanctions against Russia and has maintained economic and political ties with the Kremlin, which are bolstered by Erdogan’s close personal relationship with Putin.

At the same time, Ankara and Moscow remain strategic competitors, supporting opposite sides in proxy wars in Libya and Syria. And despite his refusal to sign on to the Western narrative about the war in Ukraine and to sanction Russia, Erdogan has in every practical sense sided with Kyiv in its fight against Moscow, establishing close defense industrial ties with Ukraine, supplying it with weapons, and even supporting Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership. Turkey, after all, does not want to see Russian control on its northern flank.

THE ULTIMATE FENCE SITTER

Like many middle powers, Turkey is seeking to avoid strategic dependence by navigating between the great powers. But its situation is particularly acute, and Turkey might be the ultimate fence sitter, torn not only between various more powerful countries but also between autocracy and democracy, Europe and Eurasia, Western-leaning secularism and conservative nationalism.

Erdogan’s cabinet choices signal his intent to navigate this complex path with a hedging strategy. Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz, Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc, and Director of National Intelligence Ibrahim Kalin represent a faction within the Turkish elite that believes that Turkey could strengthen its position, improve its economy, and circumvent domination by Russia more skillfully if it had better relations with the United States and Europe. But they are also loyal, longtime Erdogan allies whom he trusts to work well with their Western counterparts without selling out Turkish interests.

This is, on balance, a positive development for the United States and its other allies. Turkey sits at the center of many key foreign policy challenges for Washington. Turkey’s strategic location on the Black Sea—which links Russia, the Middle East, and Europe—makes the country an important player in the war in Ukraine and critical to the West’s efforts to contain Russia. Should negotiations begin between Kyiv and Moscow, Erdogan’s relationship with Putin might prove to be an important lever for the West.

And Turkey’s importance to Washington and its allies extends beyond the Black Sea region. Ankara can also help maintain stability in the Caucasus, for example, where it could push its Azeri allies to reach a peace deal with Armenia. The same is true in Iraq and Syria, places where a Turkish presence helps Washington maintain a modicum of influence. Finally, Washington is hoping that Turkey can help create a sustainable energy-transit architecture that would allow all of Europe to tap the potentially vast resources in the eastern Mediterranean.

DEAL WITH IT

For all those reasons, Washington should seek to stabilize its relationship with Ankara, despite the fact that Turkey has embraced a post-Western identity at home and a post-Western posture in its foreign policy. This means moving toward a more transactional mindset.

The successful bargaining at NATO’s recent summit in Vilnius over Sweden’s NATO accession may be a model. Erdogan was clearly in a transactional mood, and in exchange for supporting Stockholm’s bid to join the alliance, Turkey demanded concessions not just from Sweden (including an end to the unofficial Swedish arms embargo on Turkey, a more draconian Swedish antiterrorism law, and the extradition of several asylum seekers linked to the PKK) but also from the United States. Behind the scenes, the Biden administration pushed the U.S. Congress to sell F-16s to Turkey, jets that Ankara has been wanting to buy for years. To smooth the way, the White House worked out a three-way deal that involved the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Greece. In the end, the agreement made all sides reasonably happy, even if it didn’t conform to norms of how allies should treat one another.

This episode also highlighted the central importance of Erdogan, who remains the sole decision-maker on major Turkish foreign policy issues. Erdogan seeks international recognition and legitimacy and resents being held at arm’s length by Western leaders. But he is also cognizant of the changing geopolitical environment around Turkey and recognizes Turkey’s need to maintain ties with the West.

The Turkish leader prides himself on being the country’s top diplomat, but he is often unable to fulfill that mission because, during the past few years, most Western leaders have avoided meeting with him. As part of the deal for Swedish NATO membership, the Biden administration gave Erdogan the visibility he craved, holding a prominent bilateral meeting with him in Vilnius, and even released a video of Biden fulsomely praising and thanking Erdogan. There is talk of a White House visit later this year, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently met with Simsek, Turkey’s financial czar. At a time of economic fragility in Turkey, that type of American attention provides valuable reassurances to investors.

A more transactional modus vivendi would by its nature be opportunistic and short term in its outlook. The goal would be to find hard-nosed bargains that work for both sides and aren’t encumbered by demands for permanent fealty or prohibitions on Turkish relations with Russia or China. Three areas—economic cooperation, Syria, and human rights—seem immediately ripe for such bargains.

A FRIEND IN NEED

Turkey might believe that it no longer needs or can count on the Western security umbrella, but its economy is still heavily intertwined with Western markets. The EU is still Turkey’s top export market and its top investor. The Turkish economy is undergoing a severe downturn, triggered in part by Erdogan’s personal mismanagement of the economy over the past few years. Erdogan’s policies have depleted Turkey’s central bank reserves, dramatically reduced per capita income, and diminished the value of its currency. But since his reelection, Erdogan seems to have reversed course, appointing Simsek, a market-friendly former Merrill Lynch banker, as the minister of treasury and finance and Hafize Gaye Erkan, a former co-CEO and president of First Republic Bank, as the central bank governor.

Turkish markets nonetheless remain jittery, and international investors are still watching to see if the new team can reverse course and make Turkey safe for foreign investment. Ankara will eventually need international financing to be able to roll over its private-sector debt and avoid a balance-of-payments crisis. Without clear indications of Western support and financing, Turkey’s economy will remain volatile and even teeter on the brink of collapse.

That support could consist of resurrecting the idea of raising overall annual trade between the United States and Turkey to $100 billion, a goal that the Trump administration publicized in 2019 but quickly dropped. To reach that goal, Washington could declare its intentions to expand trade, engage with Turkey’s independent business organizations, and encourage the EU to start talks on upgrading its existing but outdated trade deal with Turkey; Europe, after all, is the top investor in Turkish companies and the top market for Turkish goods and services. The United States could also push Brussels to start negotiations with Ankara on integrating Turkey in the EU’s plans for a green transformation, which include developing renewable energy from the Mediterranean basin.

In return, Turkey could drop its posturing in the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean and offer Greece and Cyprus more stable relationships. Turkey already does a great deal to help Europe manage immigration, and with plentiful energy resources and cheap labor, Ankara could also put itself on the map as a production base for the United States and Europe as they try to “de-risk” their economic relationship with China by reducing their dependence on Chinese products. Turkey is not a high-tech giant, and it doesn’t have a semiconductor industry. But when it comes to a wide range of other goods, it can meet many of Europe’s needs.

THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

Syria is a core irritant between Ankara and Washington. The central issue is Turkey’s objection to Washington’s alliance with Syrian Kurds. Russia, meanwhile, backs the Assad regime in Syria, which Turkey views as a weak state that can never fully regain its legitimacy or control over all its territory. But Ankara and Moscow share a desire to prevent Kurdish self-rule and to see the departure of U.S. forces from northern Syria.

In pursuit of these objectives, Turkey has carried out numerous military incursions into Syria and has targeted the leaders of the U.S.-allied Kurdish administration in northern Syria with drone attacks. These steps are destabilizing from Washington’s perspective, as they raise the specter of a wider Kurdish-Turkish conflict and weaken the Kurds’ ability to fight against the Islamic State terrorist group (also known as ISIS).

If they want to stabilize relations, the United States and Turkey will eventually have to talk about Syria and its future. Both sides will have to take steps that they have so far avoided. Increasing U.S. aid for Syrian refugees in Turkey and northern Syria would be a good first move for Washington. The United States should also encourage Syrian Kurds to normalize relations with the Assad regime and agree to be integrated into the Syrian state in return for some type of regional autonomy. Washington cannot be the sole sponsor of an experiment in Syrian Kurdish autonomy. If there is a formula for regional autonomy for Syrian Kurds within the parameters of a future Syrian state, Turkey would have no option but to accept it, as long as any deal included guarantees that the PKK would not have influence within the Kurdish-led regional administration. Such a deal could also lead to the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and kick-start the reconstruction of northern Syria with international money—with the lion’s share of investment inevitably going to Turkish contractors.

In exchange for these steps on Washington’s part, Turkey would need to support a deal between Kurdish leaders and the regime in Damascus, allow for trade and transportation among different regions inside Syria, and accept whatever constitutional arrangement Syrians eventually agree on.

DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH

Erdogan has made it very clear over the past few years that he is not interested in political reforms at home and has little patience for Western lectures on human rights. Short-term improvements in human rights and democratic freedoms in Turkey are thus unlikely, no matter what the West does.

But Erdogan’s pragmatism and transactionalism has at times yielded results in high-profile human rights cases when Washington has pushed hard. These results include the release from prison in 2017 of human rights activists who had been imprisoned for allegedly supporting the failed 2016 coup against Erdogan and the 2018 prison releases of the German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel and the American pastor Andrew Brunson. On each of these occasions, quiet diplomacy was followed by a shameless give-and-take in which Turkey received unrelated concessions, including weapons upgrades and the provision of Leopard tanks from Germany.

Washington can and should keep the human rights conversation with Turkey alive and bargain hard to secure the release of political prisoners such as Osman Kavala, a civil society leader currently serving a life sentence in a Turkish prison on fabricated charges. But these conversations are best carried out in private with members of Erdogan’s inner circle and with clear expectations about the ransom that Washington is prepared offer.

Of course, Washington should also continue to support the aspirations of Turkish citizens who want a better democracy—and it should be consistent about its public messaging on such matters. But the United States needs to be modest about what it can achieve and not let those efforts stand in the way of achieving progress on specific cases. For now, supporting civil society, deepening cultural exchanges and economic integration, and engaging with a wide cross section of Turkish institutions (including universities and municipalities) might be more effective than issuing public ultimatums to the regime.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR US?

Erdogan is not going to change, and a post-Western Turkey will not be a traditional transatlantic ally. Turkey has its own set of interests—some shared with Washington, some not. But the United States has stable relationships with many difficult partners with whom it doesn’t enjoy full alignment. The U.S.-Turkish relationship could be in a better place that works for the Turkish economy, helps Ankara balance against Russia, and provides Washington with a bit more confidence as China’s influence in the Middle East grows.

Erdogan’s Turkey is a prototype of the kind of middle power that Washington should expect to emerge more often in the coming age of geopolitical competition. Neither enemies nor allies, these powers will not understand Washington’s struggle with Beijing and Moscow in moral or ideological terms. Rather, they will seek to maintain their independence from all sides and constantly ask themselves, What’s in it for us? The United States will need to find answers to that question that go beyond empty paeans to a rules-based order that no one really believes in. Creating a more realistic relationship with a post-Western Turkey, one based on mutually beneficial transactions, would be a good place to start.

Loading…