US President-elect Donald Trump’s second term will begin on January 20, 2025 with a hefty dose of realpolitik and disruption in store for US foreign policy. A shift seems set to take place, from the Biden administration’s ideological division of the world into two camps—democracies and autocracies—to a world of more pragmatic and transactional relations, based on the president-elect’s statements during the campaign and nominations for national security and foreign policy positions since.
The Trump campaign’s rhetoric centered on ending wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, meeting the economic and geopolitical challenge of China, and implementing border security and domestic reforms. But there will also be new opportunities and risks for the US-Turkey relationship that the Trump administration would be remiss to overlook.
Trump has a mixed history with Turkey. He has shown respect for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and an inclination to seek mutually beneficial deals on Syria, trade, and other matters, and Erdoğan hopes to proceed on that basis. Yet during Trump’s first term, the combination of a series of crises in the region—the war in Syria, the aftermath of the attempted coup in Turkey, and tension between the Turks and other US allies—and turbulent times in both capitals led to difficult bilateral relations. There were moments of comity and goodwill, as well as intervals of threats, sanctions, and embargoes between the two allies.
The second Trump term can hardly start worse than the Biden administration did vis-à-vis the US relationship with Turkey. After ignoring or discomfiting Erdoğan for over a year—by waiting months for a counterpart call, excluding Turkey from the Summit for Democracy, and officially recognizing the Armenian genocide that began in 1915—the Biden administration only engaged Ankara in a cooperative manner once Russia ramped up its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Over the two years that followed, descriptions of Turkey in Washington would evolve from “so-called strategic partner” to close ally and partner and then to “indispensable ally,” but mutual mistrust remained evident in the drawn-out negotiations on Sweden’s NATO accession and Ankara’s purchase of F-16 fighter aircraft.
From 2022 to 2024, bilateral relations took on a more constructive tone, due in part to the presence of savvy and congressionally connected US Ambassador Jeff Flake in Ankara. While Biden and Erdoğan had little direct contact, working groups and senior officials developed options and momentum for more positive relations. The fruits of that included increased coordination on Ukraine and defense cooperation. It helped that the most avid Turkey critic in the US Congress, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), stepped down from chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September 2023 and resigned from office in August this year following a bribery scandal.
The US-Turkey relationship under the second Trump administration is set to look quite different than it did under both the Biden administration and the first Trump administration. Trump’s second term will have a more cohesive foreign and national-security policy team, one more attuned to his vision and preferences. Despite previous statements or actions by several Trump nominees (Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth) that might worry Ankara, there is a high probability that Trump’s affinity for Erdoğan and willingness to seek positive relations with Turkey will set the tone for the US-Turkey relationship. In addition, the incoming team has an inclination for hard power, geopolitical thinking, and transactional relationships with allies and adversaries alike and a clear focus on China and Iran as leading threats. The diplomatic record of Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) also shows a transactional streak, indicating there will be room for mutually satisfying agreements over the next four years. A Trump administration that seems likely to reengage with Russia and decrease the ideological dimension of US-Russia relations may find complementarities with Erdoğan’s approach, which combines deterrent measures against Russia with economic incentives and consultations. Erdoğan, in any case, has maintained a cautious wait-and-see approach in reacting to the slate of Trump nominees.
More importantly, Turkey’s position as a multiregional power has improved over the past several years. During Trump’s first term, Turkey was dealing with the aftermath of a failed coup attempt and the growing US proxy relationship with the People’s Defense Units (YPG), a Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is an anti-Turkey terror group. Turkey was also dealing with Washington’s “absurdly narrow focus” on the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham and with its own tattered regional relations. Since that time, the Erdoğan government has consolidated control through elections and prosecutions of coup plotters, stabilized its monetary position, proven its influence over the conflict in Ukraine, and battered Iranian proxies in Syria.
Trump and Erdoğan both have terms that run through 2028, meaning electoral pressures should not constrain ideas the two leaders may develop for cooperation. The second Trump administration opens with Turkey positioned as a stronger and more stable regional partner, an attractive idea for a US administration more focused on domestic reforms than on micromanaging international affairs.
There are both opportunities and risks for the bilateral relationship entering 2025:
- Syria: A late-2024 opposition offensive against the Syrian regime has dramatically shifted the balance of power among the Assad regime, the rebels, militias backed by the United States and Iran, and respective external supporters. Damascus’s strategy of spurning negotiations and slowly strangling the opposition has withered under the hammer blows of Israel’s regional air campaign and the coordinated offensives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian National Army, which is backed by Turkey. A significant shift of influence in Turkey’s favor has occurred, with a commensurate loss of leverage for Russia and Iran. While the political fallout of these events—and the military developments themselves—may not be fully evident by inauguration day, it is clear that there is a new urgency, and a new set of possibilities, in Syria for the United States and Turkey to pursue their respective counterterrorism and geopolitical goals.
- Ukraine: Trump has appointed Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general, as Ukraine envoy, and Kellogg has laid out a specific plan to end the war based on negotiations, a demilitarized zone, conditional aid to Ukraine, and reengagement with Russia. The plan requires continued NATO deterrence around Ukraine (including around the Black Sea), multilateral reconstruction efforts, and likely monitoring or peacekeeping forces. Turkey, through its balanced approach, is uniquely positioned to contribute in these areas, making it an indispensable partner for the strategy to work.
- The South Caucasus/Central Asia: Without prompting from Washington, Ankara has supported normalization and peace negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. A regional deal that would finally demarcate the two countries’ borders, reopen Turkey-Armenia trade, and incentivize progress on the Middle Corridor trade initiative would lessen the dependence of Central Asian and South Caucasus states on Russia and dampen Iranian influence. A little diplomatic and financial support from the United States and its European allies could help this multilateral trade and peace initiative get off the ground, with transformative long-term potential.
- Stability in the Middle East: The Trump administration will carry over from its first term a commitment to the security of allies in the Middle East, with a strong preference for cooperation among regional partners rather than dependence on direct US interventions. Since 2021—when Ankara started its process of regional reconciliations with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and others—defense deals and cooperation in security affairs between Turkey and these other US partners have increased. The Turkish defense industry and the country’s military capabilities make Turkey an attractive partner for emerging collective security and diplomatic arrangements in the region.
- Israel and the YPG: The two biggest risks for early friction between the Trump administration and Turkey stem from the deep freeze in relations between the latter and Israel (which has driven deep mistrust in the US Congress) and the still-unresolved fate of the YPG. Neither risk is new, and both required a good deal of diplomatic investment to manage during the first Trump administration. Ankara attempted a reset with Jerusalem in the months prior to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terror attacks and may be convinced to try again once permanent ceasefires emerge in Gaza and Lebanon. Recent signals from Ankara that it would be open to a new peace process to disarm the PKK might help ease tensions with the YPG in Syria, facilitating a drawdown of US military presence and resumed cooperation on counterterrorism.
The nature of presidential transitions in the United States makes speculation about future policy a fraught exercise. While confirmed cabinet nominees will begin their roles in January, full staffing in the national security and foreign policy bureaucracies will take weeks or months longer, and deliberative processes on the thorniest regional challenges longer still. There are grounds for cautious optimism, though—based on the factors and opportunities highlighted here—that the US-Turkey bilateral relationship will see progress (albeit gradual) rather than the cycle of crisis and mutual mistrust that marked the two preceding presidential terms.
Rich Outzen is a geopolitical consultant and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Turkey Program with thirty-two years of government service both in uniform and as a civilian. Follow him on X @RichOutzen.
Further reading
Image: U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan gesture as they talk at the start of the NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium July 11, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
