Obama visit should be read properly

But those who believe that Obama is coming to reward the Justice and Development Party, or the AKP, administration are missing a point. What pushed Obama’s aides to convince their president for an early visit to Turkey was not a need to show appreciation for the AKP’s policies. To the contrary, the sense of loosing Turkey has also played an important role in the administration’s reasoning. Let me come back to this point in a moment.

The Turkish officials believe National Security Adviser General James Jones has played a key role in the decision to come to Turkey. Jones not only knows Turkey well, it also understands Turkey’s importance. He is a close acquaintance to former Foreign Minister Hikmet Çetin, to the point of staying in his residence in Afghanistan when Çetin was in Kabul as NATO’s representative.

Jones and Obama’s advisers also see the role Turkey can play in achieving American foreign policy goals, as the two countries visions’ mainly overlap on various issues. In the eyes of the Obama administration there is great potential for an effective cooperation between the two countries, provided that Turkey does not slip away. Turkey has a track record under the AKP rule of going on its own. The fact that Turkey has become less predictable in Washington’s eyes has played a role in Obama’s team country analysis.

The fact that Obama comes to Turkey at the end of a Western tour is interpreted by the Turkish bureaucrats as a wish on the part of Obama’s team to emphasize Turkey’s western identity. The embassy in Washington has insistently and specifically asked Obama’s team whether he was coming to attend the summit of Alliance of Civilizations or for a bilateral visit. The answer was that Obama was coming for the bilateral visit. The fact that the speech he will deliver in Ankara at Parliament will be the highlight of the visit rather than his attendance at the summit in Istanbul, shows that the new administration in Washington wants to see, in the words of a Turkish observer "a transatlantic partner which has good relations with the Middle East, rather than a Middle Eastern country, which is also a NATO member." As another Turkish observer rightly put it, western institutions like the EU and NATO have become nearly non existent in the rhetoric of Turkish officials. NATO is celebrating its 60th anniversary this weekend, a phenomenon hardly noticed in Turkish public opinion. But whose fault is it?

The government has not moved a finger for a special commemoration.

It is thus very important for the AKP leaders to understand this nuance. The new administration in Washington wants to underline Turkey’s western characteristics, its secular democracy. They should not misinterpret the United States’ traditional way of dealing with Turkey: "first praise the administration by giving it a sense of importance and then talk about the details of cooperation."

The "my way or highway attitude," of the neoconservatives under the administration of George Bush has backfired not only in Turkey but all over the world. Now there is an administration in Washington that listens to its allies. But it also expects them to deliver. In order to avoid any crisis in the relations, AKP rulers should have the right analysis of the new administration.