![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/barack_baraklava.jpg\")
Owner of the Gulluoglu Baklava shop, Nadir G\u00fcll\u00fc, shows off his Obama baklava.<\/p>\nBy Marc Champion<\/p>\n
Much of the world considered Tuesday\u2019s mid-term U.S. election a stinging rebuke to President Barack Obama. But among many in Turkey, it may only have increased his stature.<\/p>\n
Owner of the Gulluoglu Baklava shop, Nadir G\u00fcll\u00fc, shows off his Obama baklava.<\/p>\n
At the Karakoy Gulluoglu landmark bakery in Istanbul, the \u201cBaraklava\u201d \u2013 giant image of President Obama made in Turkey\u2019s flaky, sweet baklava pastry \u2013 is still pleasing the crowds two years after it was made in honor of Mr. Obama\u2019s election, says proprietor Nadir Gullu.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe the mistakes [that led to the Democrats\u2019 drubbing in midterm elections] weren\u2019t his, but the people around him,\u201d says Mr. Gull. When he pulls out the Baraklava, \u201ceven Iraqis and Iranians start smiling and snapping pictures,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Mr. Obama remains personally more popular in Turkey than his policies or the U.S. itself, a curiosity, given the series of disputes and wrangles the two Cold War allies have had over Armenia, Israel, Iran and other issues since he came to power. But Turks appear to have disassociated Mr. Obama from the U.S. administration as a whole.<\/p>\n
\u201cTurks generally believe Obama is sincere, but has not been able to do what he wanted,\u201d says Kerim Balci, a columnist who describes himself as speaking for Turkey\u2019s \u201creligious majority\u201d and is now editor of a recently launched foreign policy magazine, Turkish Review.<\/p>\n
According to Mr. Balci, among religious Turks sympathy for Mr. Obama\u2019s stock may even have risen over the past two years. Often called \u201cBlack Turks\u201d and excluded for decades from power by a dominant, military-backed secularist elite, religious Turks sympathized with Mr. Obama as the first black American president, he says. They likened his struggles to get things done once in power with similar entrenched resistance that has faced Turkey\u2019s Islamic leaning government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had sympathy for him when he was elected because he was black, and in the view of these religious Turks, now seems even more black,\u201d says Mr. Balci.<\/p>\n
In Ankara, Mr. Obama\u2019s sliding popularity is a real concern among policy makers, though. A weak administration could prove more difficult for Turkey in sensitive areas from relations with Israel, to negotiations with Iran, analysts say.<\/p>\n
Other politicians are drawing the opposite conclusion, that Mr. Obama will discount the possibility of a second term and carve his own swathe through the last half of his presidency, says Mr. Balci. \u201cThey think: now we\u2019ll have \u2018our\u2019 Obama, finally,\u201d he says, though he believes that view is \u201cutopian.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite all the disputes the government has had with Washington, the idea is now dawning that Mr. Obama could be a one-term president, says Suat Kiniklioglu, a parliamentarian and foreign affairs spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development party. If that turns out to be true, he said, \u201cboth Turkey and Europe might have to grapple with another president from the Republican, Tea Party strain and that would be very hard to deal with, for many of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
That kind of president wouldn\u2019t get a baklava at Gulluoglu\u2019s. Asked what would have happened had he made one of former U.S. President George W. Bush, Mr. Gull said: \u201cSome people told me they\u2019d smash my shopfront windows.\u201d<\/p>\n
via \u2018Baraklava\u2019 Still Pleasing Crowds in Turkey – Washington Wire – WSJ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Marc Champion Much of the world considered Tuesday\u2019s mid-term U.S. election a stinging rebuke to President Barack Obama. But among many in Turkey, it may only have increased his stature. Owner of the Gulluoglu Baklava shop, Nadir G\u00fcll\u00fc, shows off his Obama baklava. At the Karakoy Gulluoglu landmark bakery in Istanbul, the \u201cBaraklava\u201d \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":76351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[145,4132],"class_list":["post-24720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa","tag-barack-obama","tag-baraklava"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}