Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is looking for a new feud, initiating a diplomatic skirmish with President Biden that could portend additional tensions within NATO as U.S. and European allies confront the wayward leader.
A brief period of conciliation between Erdogan and other members of the trans-Atlantic alliance ended this week, as Turkish officials renewed their accusation that the United States orchestrated an abortive coup against Erdogan in 2016. That allegation, uncorked as Erdogan faces student protests pertaining to his management of a leading university, met with a swift rebuke from Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team.
“The course of relations between Turkey and the United States will be very, very difficult,” a European official predicted. “The cooperation of Europe with America will [be] very, very effective, close, and productive on containment of Turkey.”
The Biden administration had a message for Erdogan this week as tensions emerged just two weeks into the new presidency.
“The United States had no involvement in the 2016 attempted coup in Turkey and promptly condemned it. Recent assertions to the contrary made by senior Turkish officials are wholly false,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Thursday evening. “These remarks and other unfounded and irresponsible claims of U.S. responsibility for events in Turkey are inconsistent with Turkey’s status as a NATO ally and strategic partner of the United States.”
That statement reflects a hardening of U.S. attitudes toward Erdogan, not only in the transition from President Donald Trump’s administration to that of Biden, but more broadly. Just over four years ago, Blinken ended his tenure as deputy secretary of state by seemingly acknowledging that President Barack Obama’s administration had responded inadequately to the coup attempt in July of 2016, a failed attempt to mollify Erdogan and reverse his habit of using the U.S. as a political foil.
“The United States was one of the first ones to issue a message of support,” recalled former Turkish parliamentarian Aykan Erdemir, an Erdogan critic at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This whole misrepresentation that this was a U.S.-led coup or that the U.S. was indifferent or callous about the coup attempt, I would argue it’s all Turkish government propaganda.”
Turkish officials returned to that well this week, insisting that “it is clearly evident” that the Obama administration supported the coup. The outburst comes as Erdogan is facing down student protests whom he has denounced as “terrorists,” an effort that drew criticism from the U.S. after Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu touted the arrest of “LGBT deviants” angry about the installation of a man perceived as an unqualified Erdogan crony in a prominent role at a major university.
“Do you not feel any shame in the name of democracy about the events in U.S. that took place before the elections?” Erdogan countered Friday. “You hit record high in racism. How are you going to explain this?”
The acrimonious relationship between Ankara and other Western capitals has created a dilemma for U.S. leaders, given the strategic significance of Turkey as a member of NATO, but Erdogan’s truculence over the years and his confrontations with NATO allies such as Greece, plus the purchase of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles, has hardened U.S. and European attitudes toward Erdogan.
“Under the Trump administration, the Erdogan government was able to afford to take such shots at Washington and get away with it,” Erdemir said. “But this time around, we have seen what I would consider a strongly worded refutation of Ankara’s baseless accusations.”
Such a tone suggests Biden likely will find it easier to align with European allies, who have grown increasingly angry with Erdogan due to his use of refugee crises as political leverage against European politicians and his tempestuous assault on Kurdish forces in Syria.
“When I look at the situation, both for Europe and the U.S., Turkey put [us] in a crazy situation,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday, in a recounting of Turkey’s attack on the Kurdish militias that did most of the fighting against the Islamic State. “They launched military operations in a place where we were present at the coalition level and against our proxies … The credibility of NATO, U.S., France was totally destroyed in the region.”
Erdogan’s disregard for U.S. and European interests, in conjunction with his overtures to Russia and China, has convinced some governments within NATO that he has all-but-renounced his fidelity to the trans-Atlantic alliance. “Turkey believes its best bet lies in engaging in a form of [a] balancing act between different powers,” the European official said.
Trump’s team struggled to develop a coherent plan to break that habit, largely due to Erdogan’s success in appealing directly to the president at key moments. Trump was perceived around the world as having given a “green light” for Erdogan’s assault on the Kurds, for instance. Trump administration officials also hesitated to impose sanctions on Turkey following the purchase of Russian S-400s, but then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo managed to stiffen U.S. policy involving Ankara toward the end of Trump’s presidency as Erdogan clashed with a widening cast of American allies in Europe and the Middle East.
“[Turkey] wanted to be more independent, and Trump’s weird isolationism, the retreat of the United States from the area, gave them a window of opportunity,” the European official said. “The United States, when they saw the outcome of their initial behavior, they saw that it’s not good for their interests and for the interests of the Western alliance.”
The combined weight of Biden and the Europeans may influence Erdogan, but that effort will be a difficult task, given Erdogan’s view of the geopolitical landscape.
“They believe that the Pax Americana … is ending, and there are coming new powers like China and Russia that are becoming stronger and stronger, and this is a window of opportunity for Turkey,” the official said.
