Seven years. That was the time he had to wait Recep Tayyip Erdogan in order to get the time to get another invitation to the White House. However, before his long-awaited return to the Oval Office on May 9th as announced, he will have brokered a perhaps even more important meeting back in our neighborhood.
As is known, the Turkish president is preparing to welcome him to Ankara Vladimir Putin. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Turkey has not stopped looking for ways to claim the role of mediator. The successive meetings first with Putin and then with Joe Biden certainly raise questions about whether Erdogan will try to drive a wedge into the tentatively started processes for possible peace talks. The Americans, for their part, are interested in hearing firsthand what will be said from Putin’s mouth at the meeting with Erdogan. The reason, of course, is that in the midst of war such meetings are extremely rare, as there are not many NATO allies willing to sit at the same table with him.
Beyond that, the State Department sees with a good eye the mediating role that Turkey can play for the reopening of the agreement on Ukrainian grains. The specific issue was discussed at length during the recent visit of the Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Washington.
The US fully supports Turkey’s efforts to revive the deal, but under a different framework as it emphasizes the need to find a new “modus operandi” that will ensure merchant ships are not attacked and safely transport the grain.
As it was revealed afterwards, the invitation to the White House was one of the main demands that the Turkish side had put on the oriental bazaar table that had been set up for the approval of Sweden’s accession to NATO. Ankara had lobbied very strongly for this specific issue and even at the highest political level. The Americans, again, did not take this anti-Allied behavior personally. Thus, after the agreement with Ankara on the F-16s, they see an opportunity for rapprochement and consider Erdogan’s visit to the White House as a step in this direction. One would say that despite Turkey’s many deviations, Washington is trying to grab where it can to create a positive momentum in the bilateral relationship.
The State Department’s emphasis on Africa
The re-emergence of the Russian threat certainly helps in this direction, as it has activated reflexes seen since the Cold War era. In light of this, we are increasingly hearing from State Department officials that Turkey can play a larger role in regions such as Central Asia and Africa where the US is now reluctant to engage. In fact, in the American Ministry of Foreign Affairs they place special emphasis on Africa, considering that it is only positive that a NATO ally has a role and acts as a counterweight to the actions of China and Russia.
However, the problems that occasionally shake American-Turkish relations are not few and they are not going to disappear easily. This was clearly seen in the recent discussions held within the framework of the Strategic Mechanism, where neither country took a single step on the issue of the Syrian Kurds – whom the Americans want to support because they “turned their backs” on the war against the Islamic State in the country, while the Turks want to prevent them from getting their own autonomous “state” in Northern Syria.
Of course Erdogan knows that the suit of the good and predictable ally does not suit him. And apparently he doesn’t care to wear it. So instead of complying, he looks to be useful, believing that this strategy will allow him to maintain relations with the US without sacrificing any of the core issues.
The Americans again have not anointed him as a mediator or some kind of messenger to the Ukrainian. At the same time, however, they are not going to discourage him and not use his “good services” where and when they can be useful.
“Welcome” from Kurds and Armenians
Nevertheless, the arrival of the Turkish president in Washington will not be so clear-cut. As we are informed, the Armenian and Kurdish organizations are already preparing to offer him a “warm welcome” outside the White House, while there will also be reactions at the political level. In particular, it has not escaped the attention of Congress that Turkey has not yet apologized for the attack by Erdogan’s security men on peaceful protesters during the Turkish president’s last visit to Washington in 2017.
The specific initiative, which is already in the works, will focus on the practices of international repression (transnational repression) used by Turkey and will seek to put President Biden in an uncomfortable position communicatively, who in a difficult pre-election period sees his profile as human rights defender to crumple in the eyes of his progressive base.
But all this is probably fine print for Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As we said, the Turkish president wants the Americans to see him more as a “necessary” than a “good” ally.
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