Can President Obama still count on Turkey?

Link

BBC/ here

"... But he is also someone who has also called Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "a good friend", has been cozying up to Sudan, and just excluded Israel from an annual military joint exercise that has been held with Nato and the US since the mid-1990s......

Instead, when he visited Turkey in April he found a country that under the leadership of Mr Erdogan and his Islamist-inspired AK party has seen a rise in anti-Western rhetoric and "nationalism imbued with Islamism", according to Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research programme at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP, of course).

Although Turks have a much more favourable view of Mr Obama than they did of President George W Bush, only 14% of Turks have a positive view of the US - the lowest rating among 25 countries polled by the Pew Research Center this spring....

Last week, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu rejected criticism of his country's improving ties with countries like Iran. He told the BBC that his country was attempting to have "zero-problem" with its neighbours.

This approach has allowed Turkey to rise as a considerable regional power and, until recently, this gave Ankara the ability to mediate between West and East, and between countries like Israel and Syria.... As it grows closer to countries like Syria, it is alienating Israel, and while it defends Iran's nuclear program, it raises alarm bells in Washington.

Mr Obama is likely to be firm in expressing displeasure about the exclusion of Israel from the military exercise or his worry about the rise of anti-Western sentiments in Turkey. But he may also seek to explore whether Washington can still reap any benefits from Turkey's improving ties with some of Washington's foes and its ability to talk to them, in particular Iran.

But the US wants Turkey to use its ties with Tehran to deliver tough messages, not just sign gas and trade deals, which Mr Erdogan did when he visited Iran last month..... So in public, the US administration insists it is not worried about the developing trends in Turkey.....

But speaking at a conference last year, before becoming an Obama administration official, Mr Gordon said that while Turkey was still a stable partner, "current trends augur that it could just as easily become a more nationalist country that resents its rejection from the EU and isolates itself from the West".

He concluded by advising the next administration, of which he was soon to become part, that it "should make sure that Turkey stays on the right path, because it would be sad to discuss four years from now why we lost a valued ally".

Since that conference, the situation has only deteriorated, so it is most likely that Mr Gordon is still concerned with making sure that Turkey "stays on the right path"."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 12:36 PM