WION Spotlight | The importance of being Recep Tayyip Erdogan
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There are compelling reasons for the US and Turkey to make up with each other. Erdogan’s Turkey has emerged as a power, much like Angela Merkel’s Germany had. The US has not been doing well in West Asia and the Arab world, what with Biden being snubbed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has revived ties with both Iran and Syria, and paved the way for China as a counterweight in the region.
Some three years after an interview to The New York Times in 2020, where US President Joe Biden famously said that he would encourage the Turkish opposition to defeat Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the election, Washington wants to make nice with Turkey’s president.
The efforts of the US and its western allies, aided by the western media and dubious pollsters, to prop up the electoral opposition to President Erdogan came a cropper. In fact, such a West-inspired and supported campaign made it easier for Erdogan to triumph over his opponent. All he had to do to win another five-year term as president was to keep telling his audience of western interference in Turkey's politics and reminding them of Biden's 2020 NYT interview. This helped Erdogan to deflect attention for soaring inflation, the steep fall in the Turkish lira’s value, unemployment, flight of capital, his human rights record and his government’s performance in the aftermath of the earthquake that claimed at least 50,000 lives and destroyed infrastructure on a massive scale.
In the event, after the presidential election concluded on May 28, Biden lost no time in calling Erdogan to congratulate him on his victory. During the call, Erdogan spoke of Turkey wanting to buy the F-16 fighter jets. Biden reciprocated by asking Ankara to drop its objection to Sweden’s membership of NATO. Turkey wants to buy $20 billion worth of F-16s. The sale has been held up because of Turkey, along with Hungary, blocking Sweden’s entry into NATO. Interestingly, the US and EU also failed in their efforts to thwart the re-election of Viktor Orban as Hungary’s prime minister last year.
"I spoke to Erdogan. I congratulated Erdogan. He still wants to work on something on the F-16s. I told him we wanted a deal with Sweden, so let's get that done. And so we'll be back in touch with one another," Biden told reporters. On Sweden's NATO membership, Biden said: "I raised that issue with him. We're going to talk more about it next week."
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There are compelling reasons for the US and Turkey to make up with each other. Erdogan’s Turkey has emerged as a power, much like Angela Merkel’s Germany had. The US has not been doing well in West Asia and the Arab world, what with Biden being snubbed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has revived ties with both Iran and Syria, and paved the way for China as a counterweight in the region.
Like in West Asia, Turkey is a power in the Mediterranean, too. It is the only NATO member to assert its strategic autonomy, refuse to join US-led sanctions against Russia; and, while maintaining complicated but cooperative ties with Russia, also selling weapons to Ukraine. And, keeping above bloc politics, Ankara has sought to thrive in a mediating role between Ukraine and Russia, and between Russia and the West. The sustenance of the grain deal between Kyiv and Moscow, along with the UN, attests to Turkey’s usefulness, as an independent power, to the US, Europe, Russia, China, West Asia and the UN. These underscore the security implications of Erdogan’s victory which are all too obvious for the big powers, especially the US, Russia, and China, to ignore.
In the Ukraine war, Erdogan was the first to move in as peace-maker, months before China’s President Xi Jinping entered the race. Turkey hosted peace talks in Istanbul between Moscow and Kyiv weeks after the war broke out in Ukraine. The talks did produce a deal, which was scuttled by the US and the UK. Ankara has not been put off by the collapse of the Istanbul deal. It has been calling for revival of peace talks and putting itself forward as a mediator. Erdogan has been saying that peace in Ukraine can be achieved through “determined mediation.”
Thus, neither Ankara nor Washington can risk burning the trans-Atlantic bridge.
(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)
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