Erdogan's Turkey and Obama's United States

On November 3, 2002, an earthquake took place in Turkish politics with the election victory of the AK Party. The party (henceforth AKP), which during the campaign had stressed its anti-corruption agenda and its “Islamic Conservatism” agenda, proposed a balance between a commitment to Turkey’s secular constitution and a Muslim world view (Walker 2007, 94). The rise of the AKP as a dominant force in Turkish politics, as demonstrated by its successful passage of the constitutional referendum on September 12, 2010, and by the party’s third consecutive electoral victory 11 months later, has heightened fears among many that Ankara has turned its back on its historical alliance with Washington, especially in light of the weakening of the military and secular elites in Turkey (Walker 2012, 144). The main concern has been that Turkey, an important Islamic actor, will adopt a more radical brand of Islam with undemocratic, antiSemitic, and anti-Western dimensions (see, for example, Rubin 2006). Scholars labeled the AKP’s new foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, as “neo-Ottomanism,” “re-Islamization,” or even as a “Middle Easternization of Turkey.” According to Turkey’s current prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey needs to combine its rich Ottoman past and culture with contemporary republican values. His famous “strategic depth” notion means tapping into the historical and geographical features of Turkey as sources of political capital, with the aim of developing Turkey into a global actor (Türkmen 2009, 119). The Islamic background of the AKP (an offshoot of the Islamist and anti-US Welfare Party), and the party’s relative lack of foreign policy experience, made the United States suspicious (Walker 2007, 95). However, given Turkey’s status as an important strategic partner, the US administration decided to overcome its apprehensions. US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman visited Ankara in 2002 to request Turkish cooperation in the Iraq war planning efforts. The Turks responded by underscoring the importance of “international legitimacy,” meaning the securing of a UN mandate before

any action in Iraq. From this point on, the term “cooperation” became understood differently in the eyes of the Turkish and US negotiators (Walker 2012, 148). The AKP government signaled that it would not follow the US lead under all conditions, and positioned Turkey as a rising soft power. Turkey, a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, held the position of Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), as a member of the G-20 group of nations. Turkey has the world’s eighthstrongest military, is a NATO member, has multilateral relations with various political actors, and sees itself as an emerging soft power in the regions extending from the Balkans to the Middle East and Central Asia (Kalın 2010, 98). While Turkey’s image in the Middle East has deteriorated somewhat, the Turks still attribute growing influence to their country: in 2013, 64 percent of Turks believed that their country’s political role in the Middle East was becoming more important (Mensur and Gündoğar 2013). This article examines Turkish-US relations over the last decade, and surveys attitudes in Turkish public opinion toward the United States. The article first analyzes the impact of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq on bilateral relations, as well as on several other foreign policy issues. Subsequently, the Turkish domestic scene is reviewed, assessing attitudes toward the United States.