Obama and Ankara’s Common Concern: Lieberman

Before the Obama administration was able to pull itself together after losing the midterm elections in November, it started quaking gravely. Having summarized the internal condition concisely, let’s take a look at foreign policy updates that are big concerns for Turkey too. The U.S. domestic agenda is the economy, as always. Republicans started to impose their own projects to Obama immediately. The Republican Party cornered Obama with the tax bill last week; their goal was to ensure the continuity of low tax cuts that were reduced during George W. Bush’s term. In usual circumstances, these tax reductions would expire at the end of the year. In principle, Obama wanted the tax cuts to be extended only for the middle class. Republicans believed the tax reductions should be valid for not only the middle class, but for those with high incomes too. In the end, Obama had to compromise and Republicans got what they wanted. Of course, the Democratic Party’s left wing is uprising over this situation. They are ranting about Obama because of his spineless policy.

Obama is losing power in all fields of foreign policy. Because of WikiLeaks, America is in an incredibly messy and undisciplined state and cannot control its own house. In addition, nobody has faith in American diplomats anymore. So America, which sees itself as the leader and the superpower of the world, is experiencing a grave loss of prestige. Not that the WikiLeaks scandal isn’t enough; failures keep occurring in every area that Obama handles in foreign policy.

Winds of war are blowing between North and South Korea. The meetings that restarted with Iran in Geneva ended with failure. The START treaty signed with Russia is about to fail in Congress. And lastly, Middle East peace prospects are in bankrupt condition.

According to the common belief of the U.S. media, Israel’s government is teasing Obama like a cat playing with a mouse. Because of Tel Aviv’s rejection, Israeli-Palestinian talks, which were moving on a frail base, have stopped. Despite all efforts, Obama couldn’t convince Netanyahu to continue not building new settlements. However, Washington was already willing to give whatever it cost for only 90 days of moratorium, and offered Israel 20 F-35 warplanes with the newest technology. It is said that Netanyahu couldn’t accept this offer because of his coalition partner Lieberman’s insistent attitude on settlements. According to the last assessments made in Washington, the actual request that needs to be made to Netanyahu is to ask him to remove Lieberman as his coalition partner. Lieberman is becoming an increasing problem in the eyes of the Obama administration.

As you may guess, Turkey is having the same problem. It is known that the biggest point of contention during the continuing talks between Turkish and Israeli Foreign Ministries is Lieberman’s uncompromising viewpoint. Imagine an Israeli government where Lieberman stays away and the opposition party, Kadima, is in coalition. If such a situation occurs, both Washington and Turkey’s jobs will be much easier. According to some rumors, the Obama administration is already trying to work with Netanyahu about that kind of a negotiation.

Both Washington and Ankara can work much more easily with a Tel Aviv government that involves Kadima and excludes Lieberman. But it seems that Netanyahu doesn’t want to make a choice between Washington and Lieberman. The Likud administration’s doors are open to Kadima — but with the condition of Tzini Livri participating in the current coalition. However, Livri wants to establish a new coalition. When this is the case, both Washington-Israel and Turkey-Israel networks continue to experience problems. This is an unfair situation, but when the topic comes to Israel, for some reason the failures are noted on both Ankara and Washington’s names.