President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and the officials around him rarely miss a chance to call out Western hostility toward Islam.
When Danish newspapers published cartoons a decade ago that mocked the Prophet Muhammad, Erdogan quickly called for checks on press freedom. After the 2015 attack in Paris on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Erdogan warned that its blasphemous cartoons were “wreaking terror” on Muslims. And when Donald Trump made Islamophobia a central part of his presidential campaign last summer, Erdogan called for the rebranding of a pair of towers in Istanbul that bear Trump’s name.
Yet in recent weeks, Erdogan has kept quiet as Trump has taken office and signed an executive order banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.That is in large part because, at least for the moment, Erdogan sees Trump’s rise to the presidency as a chance to reset relations with the United States, which had nearly collapsed in the last years of the Obama administration, officials say.
“Now we have all the prospects of a fresh start,” Ilnur Cevik, a senior adviser to Erdogan, said during an interview at the presidential palace in Ankara, the Turkish capital. “We have an opening with Mr Trump.”
Turkish-American relations frayed over differing views on the war in Syria and the widespread belief in Turkey that the US played a role in a failed coup last summer.
In recent months, Turkey grew frustrated at the US refusal to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based leader of a religious social movement whom the Turkish government accuses of organising the coup attempt in July. This compounded a longer-running feud concerning US support for the leading Kurdish militia in northern Syria, which Turkey regards as a terrorist group.
Now that Trump has entered office, Ankara hopes for a change in the US policy toward the Syrian Kurds. Specifically, Erdogan wants the US to scrap an Obama-era plan to work with Kurds to recapture Raqqa, the de facto capital of the IS, and try instead with Turkish troops and Syrian Arab militias.
At the same time, Turkish officials believe the Trump administration is more likely to support extradition of Gulen and could crack down on Gulen’s supporters in the US, where they operate a network of schools.
“Hopes are very high in Ankara that Turkey-US relations will be much better under a Trump administration than the previous administration,” said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, director of the Ankara office of the German Marshall Fund of the US, a research organisation. “Erdogan does not want to endanger these two issues by speaking out against the Muslim ban.”
The meeting this past week between Erdogan and Mike Pompeo, the new head of the CIA, was interpreted in Turkey as a good sign — as was the phone call Wednesday between the two presidents. And Prime Minister Binali Yildirim reported that his phone conversation with Vice President Mike Pence had heralded a “new day” in relations.
Misplaced hopes
“What we’re seeing on the ground is that Trump has stopped the plan,” Cevik said, referring to the Obama administration’s plan to arm the Syrian Kurds for the offensive on Raqqa. But Washington insiders are more skeptical and say Turkish officials may have misplaced their hopes for specific changes in US policy in Syria.
“I don’t know why the Turks are so confident,” said Aaron Stein, a Turkey-focused analyst at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank. And James F Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Turkey, said, “They’re just not a strong enough force” to be the only US partner in Raqqa.
The phone call was most likely a routine conversation, Stein said, while the suspension of the Raqqa plan may yet be lifted once the Trump administration completes a 30-day review of Obama-era policies. Turkish troops and their Syrian allies, who have struggled to take the IS held city of Al Bab recently, may not be the best short-term partners in the fight for Raqqa.
“It’s very simple for the Trump administration,” Stein said by telephone. “They can either delay the operation for Raqqa into 2018, and entertain using a Turkish force without the YPG,” a reference to the Syrian Kurdish force that President Barack Obama considered arming. “Or they can go in the next six months with the YPG.”
The latter seems likelier, Stein said: “All indications are that countering the Islamic State is their priority — so that doesn’t bode well for U.S.-Turkey relations.”
On Friday, Erdogan approved plans for an April referendum in which Turks will vote on whether to grant him even greater power. While the result is still at stake, Erdogan is unlikely to commit to any compromise on Syrian Kurds, as this could endanger his chances of winning the referendum, said Jeffrey, the former ambassador.
But after the referendum, Jeffrey said, “then Erdogan may have more flexibility to accept the same or even greater role for the US and the YPG — as long as he gets three things.”
According to Jeffrey, the US would need to convince Turkey of its commitment to engagement with West Asia, clearly demonstrate its opposition to a single Kurdish statelet along Turkey’s entire southern border and give Turkey at least a small role in the Raqqa operation.