{"id":67129,"date":"2013-03-07T07:35:51","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T05:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=67129"},"modified":"2023-04-15T17:40:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-15T14:40:00","slug":"john-kerry-roasts-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/03\/07\/john-kerry-roasts-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"John Kerry Roasts Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

On his first trip abroad, the new secretary of state criticized Erdogan\u2019s comments about Israel. It\u2019s about time.<\/span><\/h1>\n
By\u00a0Lee Smith<\/div>\n
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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not a man who minces words. He has called Israel a \u201cterrorist state\u201d and has suggested that \u201cAllah would punish\u201d Israel for its inhumane actions in Gaza. Usually, the United States pretends not to hear Erdogan\u2019s rants\u2014but not on Friday, when John Kerry, while visiting Ankara during his first trip abroad as secretary of state, denounced Erdogan for\u00a0calling\u00a0Zionism \u201ca crime against humanity.\u201d In response to Erdogan, Kerry\u00a0said: \u201cWe not only disagree with it, we found it objectionable.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday at AIPAC, Vice President Joe Biden\u00a0praised\u00a0Kerry for standing up to the Turkish prime minister\u2014and Kerry deserved the props. Kerry\u2019s comment is as critical as State Department language gets regarding a NATO ally\u2014and it\u2019s about time. Policymakers from the Bush and Obama Administrations have sweet-talked and protected Erdogan since his Justice and Development party, known by its Turkish acronym AKP, came to power in 2003. Both White Houses saw Turkey as the model for moderate Islamism, a political current ostensibly willing to embrace democratic norms and project friendly power abroad, including the continuation of its strategic relationship with Israel. They believed Erdogan held the future of U.S. Middle East policy in his hands.<\/p>\n

But for Erdogan and the AKP that vision has come undone. Domestically, some of his key allies have become powerful and dangerous domestic rivals. Abroad, the uprising in neighboring Syria has shown Ankara\u2019s limits, incapable of shaping even its own immediate sphere of influence. These days, Turkey is looking less like an Anatolian tiger than the mouse that roared. The prospective pillar of Obama\u2019s Middle East policy\u2014the regional power that the White House might have hoped would replace Israel as a strategic ally\u2014is now in meltdown.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It all looked like it was going Turkey\u2019s way just two years ago. Erdogan had positioned himself as a power broker, and Barack Obama\u00a0considered\u00a0him one of his closest friends among world leaders. From the White House\u2019s perspective, Erdogan seemed like he had the best possible shot at bridging the distance between Washington and Tehran. The administration hoped he might strike a deal over the Iranian nuclear program that would satisfy both sides. Moreover, the White House believed he would serve as an intermediary between the Americans and the Middle East\u2019s increasingly powerful Sunni Islamist movement, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

All this was made possible by the fact that Erdogan had radically re-oriented Turkey. Ever since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had founded the Turkish republic in 1923, Turkey had looked westward for inspiration and friendship, distinguishing itself as a key NATO ally and bulwark against Soviet encroachment. But in spite of American entreaties, the EU kept deferring Ankara\u2019s membership throughout the 1990s, justifying Europe\u2019s obvious contempt of Turkey by conditioning EU accession on a healthy human-rights record. (And indeed, today Turkey has\u00a0more journalists in jail\u00a0than China does.)<\/p>\n

Hence Erdogan looked elsewhere, forsaking Europe in favor of that vast and oil-rich region stretching from the Persian Gulf to western North Africa once ruled from Istanbul by Ankara\u2019s storied ancestors the Ottomans. The new watchword was \u201czero problems with neighbors,\u201d a foreign-policy strategy cooked up by an Islamist intellectual who in 2009 became Erdogan\u2019s foreign minister,\u00a0Ahmet Davutoglu.<\/p>\n

In order to show his seriousness, Erdogan played a hand guaranteed to win him the approbation of Muslims and Arabs: the Israel card. In the wake of Operation Cast Lead, Israel\u2019s winter 2008-09 military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, he confronted Israeli President Simon Peres at Davos and told him: \u201cWhen it comes to killing, you know well how to kill\u201d\u2014and then stormed off the stage. In May 2010, when Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship, the\u00a0Mavi Marmara<\/em>, to stop it from breaking the naval blockade of Gaza, they were attacked by ship passengers, nine of whom were killed. Erdogan demanded Israel make amends. \u201cAs long as Israel does not apologize, does not pay compensation, and does not lift the embargo on Palestine,\u201d he\u00a0said, \u201cit is not possible for Turkey-Israeli ties to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama worked on Turkey\u2019s behalf to secure an\u00a0apology, in the apparent belief that the burden for fixing a relationship that Erdogan had set out to trash was on Israel. (Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu refused to apologize.) The White House also gave the Turkish leader a pass when the AKP and its allies in the Gulenist movement, a cultlike political trend associated with the charismatic preacher\u00a0Fetullah Gulen, started prosecuting journalists and military officers on charges stemming from the so-called Ergenekon plot. As I\u00a0wrote\u00a0in this column in 2010, Ergenekon was largely a political fiction cooked up to intimidate and silence opponents of the AKP and the Gulenists.<\/p>\n

The White House ignored the obvious signs of Erdogan\u2019s problematic character because the role for which it had cast him was too important. With American troops out of Iraq and scheduled to depart from Afghanistan, and Obama determined to avoid committing more resources to the Middle East, the administration sought a partner capable of keeping the order and doing the work it no longer wanted to do itself. In other words, Obama wanted to switch Israel for Turkey. Jerusalem would remain a U.S. ally, but the heavy lifting and the diplomatic outreach would be done by Ankara, which, unlike Israel, was a Muslim power in a Muslim region and, also unlike Israel, prided itself on its zero problems with its neighbors\u2019 policy.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

But the sticking point is that if you live in the Middle East you are always going to have problems with your neighbors. Erdogan found this out the hard way, with the outbreak of the Syrian uprising. The Turkish prime minister\u00a0considered\u00a0Bashar al-Assad a \u201cgood friend,\u201d but after watching the Syrian president fire on what were then peaceful demonstrators for more than half a year, Erdogan finally\u00a0called\u00a0for Assad to step down in November 2011. With refugees flowing across the border, Erdogan tried to enlist the Obama Administration in a more pro-active policy to topple Assad, but he was\u00a0ignored.<\/p>\n

Hung out to dry by Obama, Erdogan was left vulnerable to Assad as well as domestic criticism. In June, the Syrians, with Russian help, downed a Turkish jet, and the White House\u00a0sided\u00a0with Damascus\u2019 account of the incident, blaming it on Ankara. In October, Syriashelled\u00a0Turkish villages, and all Erdogan could do was complain.<\/p>\n

Erdogan\u2019s Syria policy, according to Turkish journalist Tolga Tanis, marks the first time that Turkish public opinion has tilted against the AKP\u2019s foreign policy. \u201cAt least 60 percent according to the polls are against Erdogan\u2019s Syria policy,\u201d said Tanis. \u201cThe security risk is skyrocketing, and Turks are losing money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supporting the anti-Assad rebels has exposed Turkey to retaliation from a longstanding Syrian ally and Turkish enemy, the Kurdish Workers\u2019 party. Also, Turks don\u2019t want a refugee problem on their hands, especially when some of those refugees crossing the Syrian border are Islamist militants. Moreover, with Syria consumed by civil war, Turkey has lost a major trade route to the rest of the region.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the failure of Erdogan\u2019s once-vaunted soft power. The Obama Administration tasked out much of its Arab Spring diplomacy to its man in Ankara, and in the immediate aftermath of the upheavals that brought down dictators, Erdogan was greeted by throngs in Cairo praising him as the region\u2019s great new leader. But two years on, Muslim Brotherhood parties allied with the AKP, itself a Brotherhood party, have failed to deliver on the promises that brought them to power around the region. Were Erdogan to show his face today in the Egyptian capital, it would likely serve as a target for an unhappy, unemployed shoe-thrower.<\/p>\n

At home, Erdogan\u2019s AKP is now\u00a0at odds\u00a0with the Gulenists, who seem to have taken charge of the Ergenekon trials in order to secure their hold over what Turks call the \u201cdeep state,\u201d which includes the judiciary and police. When the army\u2019s former chief of staff Ilker Basbug was\u00a0arrested\u00a0last year even Erdogan thought this was going too far. \u201cI think claims that he is a member of a terrorist organization are very ugly,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0Erdogan.<\/p>\n

Undermined at home and exposed abroad as a weakling\u2014it\u2019s hardly any wonder Erdogan is ranting against Israel again. \u201cIt was not improvised, but scripted,\u201d said Tanis. \u201cHe was anticipating Kerry\u2019s visit.\u201d The difference between now and Davos in 2009 or the\u00a0Mavi Marmara<\/em>\u00a0in 2010 is that Erdogan is projecting not power but neediness. He wants to know if the White House still loves him and needs him more than Israel. The evidence is not in his favor.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Like this article? Sign up for our\u00a0Daily Digest\u00a0to get Tablet Magazine\u2019s new content in your inbox each morning.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Lee Smith is a senior editor at the\u00a0<\/i>Weekly Standard\u00a0, a fellow at the\u00a0Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and the author of\u00a0<\/i>The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On his first trip abroad, the new secretary of state criticized Erdogan\u2019s comments about Israel. It\u2019s about time. By\u00a0Lee Smith Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not a man who minces words. He has called Israel a \u201cterrorist state\u201d and has suggested that \u201cAllah would punish\u201d Israel for its inhumane actions in Gaza. Usually, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":60022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,34],"tags":[4211],"class_list":["post-67129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","category-usa","tag-kerry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67129","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=67129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}