Obama’s Rationale

When asked whether Turkey can maintain its initiatives “toward the East at the risk of losing the West,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in his interview with Newsweek that, “We are a part of the West. If the West sees us as outside and an object that can be lost or won, their logic is wrong.” Whether their rationale is right or wrong is arguable, but I have no doubt that this is how the Western rationale works.

It is very interesting that Davutoglu’s words coincided with U.S. President Barack Obama’s interview with Corriere della Sera, in which Obama, who I think has the exact same Western rationale, explained his views about Turkey as well. One can see in Obama’s views on Turkey, which I will discuss below, the tendency to see Turkey as, in Davutoglu’s words, “an object to lose or win.”

In the Newsweek interview, Davutoglu says that as a NATO member, “We have an equal right to speak in NATO as any other country. No one has the right to see the Western alliance as its domain and name another as inside or outside of it.” Davutoglu is right in his frustration. At the same time, as much as being a NATO member is a significant element of Turkey’s westernization process, it does not stand as a yardstick on its own for Turkey to become a part of the West or to be accepted as such. Thus, when he says, “If this double standard is a Western value, we are not for it,”* Davutoglu implies not only that the West has not managed to embrace Turkey yet, but we have not accepted the West in its entirety and will not do so unless some things change.

But is it that bad that the West sees Turkey “as an object to lose or win?” Perhaps Turkey is not accorded enough authority cto match the responsibilities it assumes as a member of the enlarged family of Western nations. Turkey, for instance, is absolutely right in complaining about some friends’ decision to apply U.N. sanctions on Iran and then approaching Turkey, Iran’s closest “Western” neighbor, with a fait accompli before the U.N. Security Council vote. Yet, in my view, the West’s efforts to win us or not to allow others to win us bring Turkey considerable advantages as well. First and foremost of these advantages is the need the West feels to hold its reactions back, even in cases where they are very disappointed with Turkey.

Let’s now have a look at Obama’s words. While saying that the EU’s unwillingness is neither the sole nor the major factor at the root of the latest changes in the orientation of Turkish behavior, Obama could not help but say the following: “If they [Turkey] do not feel part of the European family, then obviously they’re going to look elsewhere for alliances and affiliations.” First of all, it catches our attention that the American president already takes for granted that there is a shift of axis in Turkish foreign policy and that the EU plays a role in that presupposed outcome. His longing either to not lose Turkey on behalf of the West or to win Turkey could not be more apparent. Obama’s words, in spite of the tension in Turkish-American relations and the American disappointment following Turkey’s “no” vote on U.N. sanctions on Iran, are a manifestation of how indispensable Turkey is as a strategic country.

As a matter of fact, Obama’s approach to Turkey is not much different from any other previous American administration. “Anchoring Turkey to the West” has indeed always been the goal in Washington, and this has guaranteed that mutual relations are never cut off. Even when mutual relations were strained, as they are at the moment, the signs of American disappointment faded away fast and eventually gave way to new mutual reverences. The Bush administration’s insistence on finalizing the monetary assistance at the amount of $1 billion (although the conditions for preliminary agreement with Turkey were automatically off the table after Turkey rejected the motion, which would allow the U.S. to use Turkish soil to open a northern front for the Iraq War, on March 1, 2003) can be explained with the same motives.

The underlying rationale for Obama’s opening to the Muslim world, with which tensions grew after the 9/11 attacks, and his choice to pay his first overseas visit to Turkey, which had initially created a lot of obstacles in Iraq, are the same. Many Americans see not only Turkey but also the entire Islamic world “as a mere object to win or lose” and try to reduce the harm from the Muslims to a minimum. These are certain habits that remained from the West’s colonialism past and are fed by Orientalism. See what President Obama said on July 8 in his interview with Israeli TV [Channel 2] as he discussed the prevalent negative Israeli views of him: “I think that sometimes, particularly in the Middle East, there’s the feeling of the friend of my enemy must be my enemy, and the truth of the matter is that my outreach to the Muslim community is designed precisely to reduce the antagonism and the dangers posed by a hostile Muslim world to Israel and to the West.”

In the same interview, after saying that his middle name, Hussein, might have raised the suspicions of Israel, he tries to eliminate these. The conspiracy theories of Obama being a Muslim, which draw on Obama’s middle name and a couple of childhood years he spent in Indonesia, have rendered Obama almost a threat to the West in the eyes of some Americans and many Israelis. In contrast, the echoes of these qualities of Obama have done the exact opposite in the Muslim world, including Turkey. Yet, time has demonstrated that with all his positive and negative features, President Obama possesses the exact same Western rationale, and thus, there is no need to resort to conspiracy theories at all. The views he most recently expressed in regard to the West’s relations with Turkey and the Islamic world bear witness to this.

* Editor’s note: In the Newsweek article, this quote directly followed a statement by Davutoglu referencing the West’s double standard of voicing “objection when human rights are violated by an Eastern or Muslim country but remain[ing] silent when Israel violates human rights.”