U.S. Policy on Turkey
JAMES F. JEFFREY
SONER CAGAPTAY
TURKEY, a NATO member,
sits on prime real estate. Whether leveraged as a partner to fight the Islamic
State (IS) in Iraq or Syria, end the war in Syria, stymie refugee flows from
Syria into Europe, or, last but not least, address Russian influence in Eastern
Europe, Ankara is a crucial ally for the United States. If the U.S.-Turkey
relationship faces problems, Washington will be hard-pressed to implement its
policies in Turkey’s neighborhood. Turkey is one of the most important
countries for the United States overall, and of central importance for U.S.
policy in southern Europe and the Middle East. But Washington’s mishandling of
the Syrian civil war, along with its tilt toward the Syrian Kurdish Democratic
Union Party (PYD) in the fight against IS in eastern Syria, risks forcing
Turkey ever more into the Russian camp out of pure self-defense. In this
regard, the new administration should understand the motives and objectives of
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the most powerful Turkish leader since Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk established the Turkish republic in 1923.
Since
2002, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has tried to make Turkey a
standalone Middle East power, so far without success. Moreover, Turkish
foreign policy looks now, ironically, as it did under former Turkish president
Suleyman Demirel in 1995: uncertain relations with Russia, Iran, Iraq, and
Syria, with its only reliable allies the United States and thus NATO; (recently
normalized) ties with Israel; and a relationship with the European Union
characterized by one step forward, one step back. An opening therefore exists
for the next president to improve ties with Erdogan and enlist Ankara more
securely in regional initiatives, if only in a transactional and inevitably
frequently contentious way.
Why
does the United States need a new policy on Turkey? The risks posed by a failed
relationship with Turkey are immense, ranging from a setback for U.S. efforts
to fight IS to a weakening of NATO’s ability to stem refugee flows into Europe,
a development that would destabilize America’s allies. Furthermore, with or
without Erdogan, Turkey is one of the most successful economic powers in the
region, with a longstanding role as an important U.S. ally. Managing relations
with Turkey well or badly will have ramifications throughout the world.
Flawed Traditional
Approach
The next president, however,
cannot bring Turkey more securely into America’s fold by using the traditional
U.S. approach, whereby the United States assumes that it holds most of the
cards with its foreign interlocutors, that given America’s championing of
universal values it knows better than other states themselves what is good for
them, and that the other countries both value relations with the United States
above most other interests and feel they have few alternatives. Washington thus
is often tempted to treat its friends and allies as a parent handling
“misbehaving children,” with endless talk, persuasion, and, if necessary,
threats to withdraw love. Not only does this approach often fail to elicit
Washington’s desired outcome, but with President Erdogan and to some degree
Turkey as a “system,” it has been, repeatedly, disastrously, counterproductive.
A Way Forward
Given these failings, the
United States should adopt a transactional approach to Turkey focused on common
security interests, while emphasizing, and to some degree negotiating to make
progress on, democratic liberal values.
It
is important in this transactional arrangement that the United States has tools
with which to “trade.” The Obama administration has challenged the efficacy of
many of these tools, but if the next U.S. president were to offer them, this
would generate greater interest than usual. Washington can respond to Turkey’s
needs with more vigor, effort, and resources if Ankara were more helpful on the
U.S. agenda. This will vary specifically depending on the new administration’s
priorities and global events, but would likely include more sensitivity to
America’s legitimate concerns about Turkey’s domestic trends under Erdogan.
Erdogan’s Agenda
Step one to any “transactional
reordering” is to understand Erdogan. His ultimate goal by 2023, the one
hundredth anniversary of the Turkish republic’s establishment, is to steward
the creation of an internationally and economically stronger, politically
stable Turkey that would eclipse the epochal achievement of Ataturk himself.
That goal does not include a greater anchoring of Turkey in Western values,
although Erdogan appears supportive of at least formal democratic procedure,
nor does it include loyal sacrifice for an American global security system.
However, if convinced that such a system can advance his international and economic
agenda, he can be persuaded to support it.
To achieve his goals, he needs
Ataturk-like power. In 2014, Erdogan stepped down from his post as prime
minister to become the country’s president. Despite his growing formal and
informal powers, including continued de facto control over his party, the AKP,
almost continuously running the government without coalition since 2002, the
country remains a parliamentary system. Therefore, he has focused on
transforming Turkey into an executive system ever since becoming president.
Such a change would require a constitutional amendment to overturn the
presidency’s constitutionally mandated nonpartisan status, thus allowing him to
officially lead his AKP. Here, the fate that befell two past leaders, Turgut
Ozal and Suleyman Demirel, is instructive. Both saw their movements wither
after they became head of state. Erdogan, as seen in his recent sidelining of
former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, is determined to avoid this outcome by
retaining direct control of the party. In this arrangement, he would be
Turkey’s head of state, head of its ruling party, and de facto head of
government all at the same time.
Turkish law offers two ways to
amend the constitution to eliminate the restraints on the presidency: through a
two-thirds majority in parliament (i.e., 367 of the 550 deputies voting in
favor) or a three-fifths majority (330 votes). In the latter case, the amendment
would also need to pass a popular referendum. Currently, the AKP has 317
deputies in the legislature. Yet voting tallies and poll results indicate that
the party may have maxed out its electoral support, so Erdogan will have to
shift his approach to reach either of the thresholds for amending the
constitution.
Enter the right-wing opposition Nationalist Action Party (MHP). By
courting this party, its forty seats, and its base in the event of a
referendum, Erdogan can garner at least enough votes to create an
executive-style presidency. In order to win over MHP deputies and voters, he
has threatened legal action against the ultra-Turkish-nationalist MHP’s bitter
foe, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Such motives also partly
explain the president’s ferocious campaign against the insurgency conducted by
the country’s Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), considered a terrorist entity by
Washington, as well as its opposition to the PYD, the PKK’s franchise inside
Syria. By thus widening the AKP’s own popular support, Erdogan could help his
party gain the majority it needs—whether in the current parliament, through early
elections, or in a public referendum. Such an outcome would also effectively
sideline Turkey’s main opposition faction, the secular-leftist Republican
People’s Party (CHP), which currently holds 133 seats.
A second concern for Erdogan, besides the Kurdish
nationalists, is the Gulen movement. Erdogan is convinced that this movement
and its founder, Fethullah Gulen, a U.S. permanent resident in Pennsylvania,
are behind the failed July 15, 2016, coup plot in which 244 Turks died and the
Turkish president himself almost lost his life. Given his suspicions, Erdogan
will likely never give up his quest to have Washington extradite Gulen. Many
people in Turkey share Erdogan’s deep animosity toward the Gulen movement,
including, most obviously, pro-AKP Turks (about half the country’s population)
but also opposition Turks, among them secular Turks who deeply distrust the
Gulen movement as a cult that has tried to take over the Turkish state. Secular
liberal Turks see the AKP as openly Islamist and therefore dangerous, but view
the Gulenists as secretly Islamist, insidious, and hence even more dangerous.
Even the Kurdish nationalists despise the Gulenists. And the Gulenists, as
staunch Turkish nationalists themselves, have long opposed both the PKK and
cultural and political concessions to the Kurds.
What Can the United
States Give?
For any relationship with
Erdogan to succeed, it will, as noted, have to be transactional—that is, based
on mutual interests and trade-offs rather than deep friendship and shared
values. Thus, the incoming U.S. administration must know what its toolbox
contains, and what it can “trade” with in such a relationship with Turkey.
These trade items fall into three categories: bilateral issues, general foreign
policy cooperation, and Syria/Iran.
BILATERAL ISSUES
For starters, with the Gulen
issue uniquely uniting many Turks, including Turkish Kurds, around Erdogan,
Washington must convince Turkey that it is swiftly and thoroughly reviewing
Ankara’s request for Gulen’s extradition. If extradition is delayed or denied
by the courts, the administration must rapidly deploy measures, such as limits
on movement and investigation of funding, to constrain the ability of both
Gulen and his organization to influence Turkish domestic affairs.
Separately, the United States
can quietly guarantee Turkey that the Armenian Genocide resolution in Congress
will not pass. This has always been critical in the relationship, and most
Turks care deeply about the issue.
On arms sales, the United States can make a serious effort to deal
with Turkey’s longstanding complaints about delay-in-delivering, detuning, and
resistance to offsets in the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program for Turkey.
Washington should commit to an early trip by the secretary of defense that
focuses not only on geopolitics but also on adopting a model like the
U.S.-Israel arms sales relationship to ensure a smoother and better-managed
program. The flagship F-35 program should be given special attention. More
broadly, the next president and defense secretary should repair U.S.- Turkey
military ties, which have been damaged in part by Defense Department
perceptions of Erdogan’s negative role in the 2003 Iraq war, break with Israel,
Syria policy—including, until recently, an open-door policy toward radicals
there—and opposition to the Syrian Kurdish PYD’s alliance with Washington
against the Islamic State.
SYRIA/IRAN
The greatest strain on the
U.S.-Turkey relationship apart from Gulen has been Syria policy, a scenario
with three related threats to Turkey’s south—namely, (1) the Assad regime,
allied with Russia and Iran; (2) an anti-Turkish leftist Kurdish nationalist
movement, the PKK, located in southeastern Turkey and in northern Iraq, and its
sister organization, the PYD, in northern Syria; and (3) the Islamic State. The
first is potentially existential. The second is a serious long-term threat to
Turkish territorial integrity as well as a critically important domestic
political football. The third is one danger among many to Turkey but not
perceived as existential. The Obama administration, by contrast, saw its
primary policy in Syria and Iraq as destroying IS. Officially, the
administration wanted President Bashar al-Assad to leave and saw his regime as
fueling Sunni Islamic terrorism and, as noted, considered the PKK a terrorist
organization. In practice, however, the dangers of confronting Assad and the
Russians, and the administration’s diplomatic ambitions with Iran, severely
limited interest in confronting Assad and his allies. Furthermore, Washington
needed the PKK-associated PYD in the fight against the Islamic State. Both such
policies placed it at loggerheads with Ankara.
In this regard, the
Turkish incursion into Syria in late summer 2016 offered an opportunity. The
Jarabulus operation provided Turkey with a bridgehead in Syria that increased
Ankara’s value to the United States as a partner in fighting the Islamic State.
But U.S. and Turkish perceptions of how to fight IS in northern Syria are
strongly divergent, with these differences coming to a head in early January
2017. After suffering significant casualties fighting IS in the al-Bab region,
Turkish forces were unable, for technical reasons, to obtain U.S. air support
and turned to the Russians for airstrikes. This led to a flurry of Turkish
threats to close down the U.S. anti-IS operations out of Turkish bases. Setting
aside technical issues, the underlying problem is the U.S. reliance on the PYD
and its Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
Arab allies for the assault on
the IS capital, Raqqa, in eastern Syria. The Turks, for their part, fear that
the PYD is using its U.S. alliance to eventually create a large, contiguous
Kurdish-controlled enclave that would provide a new front for PKK activities
against Turkey and possibly a corridor for Iran to reach western Syria and
Lebanon.
These concerns are legitimate.
If Washington could reach an agreement with Turkey on its northern Syrian safe
zone that would support the Turks and their Syrian opposition allies with
advisory teams and airpower, limit PYD activity in non-Kurdish areas, and
refuse to recognize PYD autonomy, much of the rancor in the current
relationship would dissipate. Such joint effort would also afford leverage to
the United States against Iranian and Russian efforts to push for a total victory
against the Syrian opposition despite the current ceasefire. Shared U.S.-
Turkey efforts, including a possibly separate front to the west of the PYD
forces against Raqqa, could expedite the destruction of the Islamic State. In
any case, the United States can hardly prosecute a serious campaign against IS
in northern Syria without Turkish bases, entailing a cost in cooperation.
The PKK provides another basis
for cooperation. The United States could contribute more intelligence support
in Turkey’s fight against the PKK, asking in return for additional insight into
Turkish plans for combating the group. Washington also needs to manage the
Turkey-PYD relationship in Syria beyond the Islamic State campaign. In the long
term, managing this relationship should culminate in renewed peace talks
between Ankara and the PKK (Ankara and the PYD both view each other through the
lens of Turkey- PKK ties), a development that would almost immediately change
the tenor of Turkey-PYD ties. Erdogan, who wants to become an executive-style
president, knows that if he can deliver a military victory against the PKK,
this development would make him massively popular in the eyes of many voters.
He could thus be rewarded with more than 50 percent of the vote, opening the
path for an executive and partisan presidency and fulfilling his long-awaited
dream.
Indeed, Turkey is unlikely to enter into peace talks with the PKK
until Erdogan has forced the group into some sort of military defeat, which
means Turkey- PYD ties will be fraught with tensions until Erdogan has
registered such a victory. The United States might consider delivering enhanced
military assistance to Turkey to help bring forth this outcome. In this regard,
Erdogan’s greatest asset is Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s founder, who is now in a
Turkish jail serving a life term. Ocalan has charismatic pull over the PKK—and
also the PYD, with Ocalan posters in PYD offices and Ocalan badges on uniforms
of the People’s Defense Units (YPG), as the PYD militia is known, signaling the
group’s affiliation with the PKK. So far, Erdogan has kept Ocalan incommunicado.
When he feels that he has inflicted enough military damage on the PKK, he will
allow Ocalan to speak, at which point the PKK leader will likely call on the
organization to lay down its weapons. Ocalan wants to get out of jail as part
of a compromise with Erdogan, and to this end, he will deliver a ceasefire
message to the PKK when Erdogan is ready for it. Both the PKK and the PYD will
likely listen to Ocalan, their honorary and, more important, ideological
leader. At this point, Turkey-PYD ties would seemingly shift back to the
post-2013 period, with tensions falling significantly and Ankara and the PYD
reestablishing contacts active in 2014–15.
Peace
talks between Turkey and the PKK would help normalize Turkish ties to the PYD
in Rojava, its Syrian homeland. In the long term, assuming an accommodation
with Ocalan and the PKK, Turkey might even conceivably build a relationship
with Rojava akin to its ties with the KRG. In 2007, the KRG leadership,
realizing that it was surrounded by hostile states—Iran, Iraq, Syria, and
Turkey— and needed at least one friend to survive over time, picked Turkey. In
the ensuing years, Erbil offered Ankara economic and financial incentives, such
as access to KRG markets, as well as natural gas and oil deals. Economic ties
became the building blocks of the relationship, establishing confidence, and
soon closer political and even security cooperation ensued between Ankara and
the Iraqi Kurds.
Although Rojava does not have nearly as much oil as does the KRG,
Turkish access to its markets and construction sectors would be a definite
sweetener in any pursuit of rapprochement between Ankara and the Syrian Kurds.
More important for Ankara, Rojava could offer Turkey a cordon sanitaire
protecting Turkey from instability, sectarian warfare, conflict, and jihadist
threats coming from the rest of Syria, in the same way the KRG acts as a very
effective buffer between Iraq’s unstable center and Turkey.
The budding of a close
relationship between Turkey and Rojava can only be envisioned against the
backdrop of peace talks and good ties between Ankara and the PKK, and by
extension good ties between Turkey and the PYD. For their own part, the Syrian
Kurds might eventually decide, following the KRG example, that they cannot
survive in a hostile neighborhood surrounded only by enemies, and that they
will need at least one friend—Turkey—in order to survive in the long term. U.S.
policy should help Ankara weaken the PKK militarily in order to usher in
Turkey-PKK talks, a definite precursor to Turkey- Rojava normalization. Even if
Turkey-Rojava ties never reach the level of Turkey-KRG ties, the KRG is a much
larger entity than Rojava and offers Turkey many more economic benefits, Turkey
and the Syrian Kurds could still come to a modus vivendi.
GENERAL FOREIGN POLICY ISSUES
Most important beyond the Syria/Iran conundrum is Russia.
Highest-level discussions are needed to assess where Ankara and Washington
stand on the issue of both Russia in general and Russia as an informal ally of
Iran in Syria and perhaps elsewhere in the region. Turkey needs to know whether
the United States will contain Russia or whether Turkey will be left on its
own, as was recently the case in the al-Bab battle. For their part, U.S. officials
need more clarity on the Turkish vision for the Turkish Stream pipeline project
announced by Erdogan earlier this year in Saint Petersburg. If the intent is
truly to substitute for the 60 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas now
flowing annually through Ukraine (one-quarter to Turkey, the rest to EU
states), it would have serious geostrategic and energy security implications
requiring in-depth discussion. If the informal Russia-Iran alliance on Syria
continues, particularly if the Russian deployments to Syria remain, Washington
should also demonstrate a willingness to keep NATO’s Patriot presence,
including redeployment of U.S. Patriot batteries in Turkey, until a final
Geneva agreement on Syria or pullout of Russian reinforcements is enacted. The
United States could also periodically deploy F-22 or F-35 fifth-generation
fighters to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base to signal the seriousness of U.S.
efforts to contain Russia. This U.S. commitment could also include more
frequent Black Sea operations as part of NATO naval deployments, both by the
United States unilaterally and with Turkey cooperatively.
On
the Cyprus dispute as well as Turkey-Israel relations, Washington should
increase engagement. This would be done in conjunction with U.S. efforts on
eastern Mediterranean gas exports to a Turkish “Eurasian gas hub” and U.S.
support of the Baku (Azerbaijan) pipelines to Turkey. Likewise, the United
States could give concrete support with the EU on the Trans-Anatolian Natural
Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to bring Azeri and
possibly other Caspian or even Iraqi gas to Europe through Turkey.
On
Iraq, Washington and Ankara should continue their cooperation on security for
the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The United States should be careful,
within the limits of its own relations with Baghdad, not to discourage
Turkey-KRG hydrocarbons cooperation. Given the possibilities for both direct
trade with and transit shipments through an ever more oil-rich Iraq, the United
States should support reconciliation between Baghdad and Ankara. Real progress
on this front, however, will depend on U.S.-Turkey success coordinating
effective policy toward Syria and Iran.
Finally, Washington could find ways inside or outside
the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) to deepen bilateral
trade and investment. Going forward, building economic leverage in Turkey is
the best way of ensuring U.S. political leverage in the relationship.
What Can Turkey Give
in Return?
In return for the proposed U.S. steps, the five
main issues on which Turkey can be helpful involve
a stronger commitment to the fight against the Islamic State;
a return to peace talks with the PKK;
more flexibility on Cyprus and Israel;
closer cooperation with Washington on military moves, especially
in Syria and against Russian provocations all around Turkey; and
more emphasis on democratic values, rule of law, and domestic
freedoms.
Unfortunately, the Islamic
State has targeted and, as seen with the New Year’s Eve Istanbul attack, will
increasingly target Turkey; thus, cooperating with Turkey against the jihadist
group provides an opportunity for building ties. Furthermore, even in the
aftermath of Turkish-Russian normalization, the broader resurgence of
Russia—now Turkey’s neighbor in Crimea and on the southern border— will
undoubtedly remind Erdogan of NATO’s value and could help improve U.S.-Turkey
military ties during the new administration. Relatedly, Russia’s aggression
toward Turkey following the November 2015 downing of a Russian military plane
demonstrated clearly how vengeful Moscow can be. Nevertheless, in agreeing to
the Russia-brokered Syrian ceasefire in December, and then calling on Russia to
provide (apparently ineffective) airstrikes around al-Bab in early January
2017, Turkey signaled to Washington that absent U.S. engagement and support for
Turkish objectives, Turkey will make deals with Putin.
Ultimately, though, what the United States and Turkey can do
against the Islamic State together, with potential peace between Turkey and
Kurds in mind, will dictate the success of this transactional relationship. If
Turkey makes peace with Kurds at home, something enhanced U.S. assistance to
Turkey against the PKK can usher in, it can even more easily make peace with
Kurds in Syria, facilitating a Turkish- Kurdish bond in the Middle East similar
to Ankara’s with the KRG—and one in the U.S. interest.
Washington’s
ability to deliver on Turkish issues is affected by Turkey’s behavior on human
rights and democracy, and how Turkey is viewed from the outside. Therefore, it
is important that U.S. policy on Turkey be guided by an emphasis on rule of
law, which has been damaged considerably by a decade and a half of AKP rule.
The next president must raise rule of law in his dealings with Turkey as a
means not only of limiting the AKP’s authoritarianism but also of reminding
Erdogan that he, too, will need this norm should the AKP and Erdogan fall from
power.
In the last decade, under Erdogan, Turkey went from being a
country of mostly poor to a country of mostly middle-income people. Now, Turkey
has a chance to move up the ladder and become a high-income economy, despite
slumping economic performance in 2016. The country, though, cannot do so
simply by making cars, as it does now, but instead by becoming a hub for the
“Googles” of the world and other value-added and information-based industries.
This is where unfettered freedoms come into play. In order to be a hub for
“Googles,” Turkey needs to become an open society, able to attract creative
professionals from around the globe and to keep its creative people at home.
Only a society that provides unlimited rights and freedoms, that is seen as
having a respected and independent judicial system, will achieve such a result,
one in the interests of all Turks. The United States is uniquely positioned to
make this argument, but then only if both transactional cooperation and
leader-to-leader personal relations function better than they do today.
It is possible that Erdogan’s impetuous actions,
frequent disdain for the West, and penchant for ever more authority will render
any cooperative policy with the United States moot. But that is a possibility,
not a certainty. The United States can tip the scales toward a different
outcome with the right policies and personal relations. The latter include
reining in the understandable ire of many U.S. government and military
officials who chafe under Turkish criticism, a characteristic of the
relationship that predates, and goes beyond, Erdogan. Finally, Washington has
little to lose with a more-carrots-than-sticks approach. Sticks are in short
supply: the United States and the West need Turkey; Turkey and Erdogan, in
return, need the United States.
THE AUTHORS
James F. Jeffrey, the Philip Solondz
distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute , is a former deputy national
security advisor and U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq. Soner Cagaptay is the
Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The
Washington Institute.
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