The Washington Post WorldView 7:09 AM - By Ishaan Tharoor with Rachel Pannett - Trump’s Middle East trip coincides with a big week for Turkey’s Erdogan

 The Washington Post 

WorldView

  7:09 AM     3 hours ago 

By Ishaan Tharoor

with Rachel Pannett

Trump’s Middle East trip coincides with a big week for Turkey’s Erdogan

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey during a news conference at the White House in 2019. (Alex Edelman/Bloomberg)

President Donald Trump is the center of attention this week in the Middle East. On the first major tour of his second term, Trump was feted Tuesday in the royal court in Riyadh where he presided over the inking of a slate of potentially lucrative business deals with the oil-rich monarchy. The investment extravaganza — which, because of its many links to Trump’s family enterprises and personal connections, has raised profound ethical concerns — will proceed to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, where more deals are in the offing.

During an hour-long address to Arab leaders in the Saudi capital, Trump seemed to skirt some of the region’s entrenched political challenges. He barely mentioned Israel and the unresolved plight of the Palestinians, and spoke airily of finding a new peaceful status quo with Iran. He nodded to a hope that Saudi Arabia would join the normalization agreements between a clutch of Arab states and Israel, known as the Abraham Accords, but added that it would be “in your own time.” And he appeared to attack U.S. neoconservatives — “the so-called nation builders” who “wrecked far more nations than they built” — for a generation of failed interventions in the Middle East.

Perhaps the most newsworthy development was Trump’s declaration that long-standing U.S. sanctions on Syria would be dropped to help strengthen the Syrian transition away from the dictatorship of ousted President Bashar al-Assad. “I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness,” Trump said, after it emerged that he would also be meeting the country’s leader, the former rebel warlord Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, in the Saudi capital.

The announcement triggered spontaneous celebrations in Syrian cities and heartened the assembled Arab dignitaries in Riyadh, many of whom had privately urged the United States to scrap the restrictions, which were an impediment to investment and reconstruction in the war-torn country. Trump said the move was due in part to the request of influential Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But the White House has also been lobbied for weeks by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who in various phone calls with Trump has asked the United States to ease sanctions on Syria’s new government.

 

The timing of Trump’s trip coincides with a heady few days for Ankara. Turkey will host top-level delegations from Russia and Ukraine — including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — for the first direct talks between the two countries since the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Trump has dispatched Secretary of State Marco Rubio to attend proceedings amid growing hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough for which Erdogan’s government spent years laying the groundwork.

Separately this week, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — the militant Kurdish faction known by its abbreviation, PKK — announced that it will disarm and disband as part of a peace initiative with Turkey. That would bring to a close a four-decade insurgency that led to tens of thousands of deaths, roiled Turkish politics and spilled across borders.

 

Negotiations with Ankara blew hot and cold over Erdogan’s almost two decades in power, with domestic and regional developments incentivizing a burying of the hatchet. The thaw with the PKK and its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan likely enabled a recent political agreement between Syrian Kurds — who are closely linked to the PKK — and Sharaa’s Turkish-backed fledgling government. It also might secure more Kurdish voters in Erdogan’s camp, as the Turkish leader looks at constitutional reforms to extend his rule amid increasing concerns over the hardening autocratic nature of his rule.

Less than two months ago, Turkish authorities deposed and jailed Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul widely seen as Erdogan’s most credible challenger, on charges that his supporters consider trumped up. Mass protests followed and faced forceful suppression from security forces.

“This is Erdogan’s big comeback on the world stage,” Asli Aydintasbas, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, told me. “A few months ago, Turkey was being labeled the ultimate example of electoral autocracy, heading into dictatorship. Fast forward into mid-May and what you have is Erdogan — out in the cold for four years [under the previous administration of President Joe Biden] — coming back both as a winner in Syria and a big player in the Ukraine-Russia space.”

Trump’s return to the White House paved the way for this comeback. Trump has made no secret of his personal rapport with Erdogan and admiration for the putative strongman. The two leaders “are transactional partners with converging mindsets,” wrote Alper Coskun, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Erdogan sees a lot of himself in Trump and his policies,” Coskun explained. “Trump’s desire to shake up American institutions and its established bureaucracy, his polarizing rhetoric on the domestic scene, and his distaste for liberal, progressive agendas align with Erdogan’s playbook, as does Trump’s sense of urgency in achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine.”

 

Turkey’s influence in its wider neighborhood and ability to be a stabilizing force in the region is a strength in the eyes of the Trump White House, which seems willing to forgive other geopolitical friction with the NATO ally. “Over the previous 15 years, tensions over Iran, Syria, Russia, and China pushed the United States and Turkey from strategic alignment to mutual mistrust,” wrote Gonul Tol, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “Sanctions disputes, diverging war strategies, and Ankara’s deepening ties with Moscow and Beijing all eroded mutual confidence.” But now, Tol added, “after years of divergence, the door to a reset is ajar. Turkey is ready to walk through it.”

Trump has already made clear that the internal politics of countries such as Turkey or Saudi Arabia are not his concern. The beleaguered Turkish opposition, Aydintasbas told me, now has to “decide what it means for them in a climate where the West is not approaching Turkey with normative values.”