US President Donald Trump (left) follows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan onto the podium to attend a ceremony event during a NATO leaders meeting at Hertfordshire, England, on December 4, 2019. [Francisco Seco/AP]
The news of Donald Trump’s return to the White House brought smiles to the presidential palace in Ankara, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s associates believing that despite its many difficulties, the relationship between the two men was functional.
“In the short term there is a positive atmosphere about Trump’s victory and Erdogan will try to construct a new reset with the US administration, but in the medium and long term we are in for much more unpredictability and instability,” says Sinan Ulgen, director of the think tank EDAM and a former senior Turkish diplomat.
In the short term, Erdogan will push for a rapid withdrawal of US forces from Syria in order to leave it in Ankara’s “care.” Trump has also said he will seek peace in Ukraine quickly and Erdogan believes he has an important diplomatic role to play there as he talks with all sides, analysts say.
However, Turkey is on a collision course with the US as far as Israel is concerned. On the economic front, Trump’s policies will probably lead to a trade war, not only between China and the US, but also between Europe and the US, and that is also not good for Turkey’s ailing economy.
Difficult issues that remain flashpoints between Ankara and Washington are the Russian S-400 defense system and possible developments in the New York court case against Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank for circumventing US sanctions on Iran, which directly implicate Erdogan himself and his son-in-law.
Tough love
The similarities between the two presidents are many, particularly in terms of making policy decisions in a transactional way (“kazan kazan” as Turks say), reinforcing nationalist sentiment and trying to cultivate an American and a Turkish dream respectively.
“Their chemistry is good, and Trump seems to like Erdogan and appreciate his style of leadership, just like he does with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban,” Ulgen says.
Their relationship had many ups and downs during Trump’s first term. The doubling of US tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum in 2018, in response to the imprisonment of the American pastor, accelerated Turkey’s economic crisis, leading to a 20% tumble of the Turkish lira within days.
Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems led to its withdrawal from the F-35 program and imposed sanctions on its defense industry. Then in October 2019, Trump initially gave the green light to the Turkish military operation in northern Syria against the People’s Defense Units (YPG) – a US ally – but then strongly opposed it. He imposed sanctions and threatened to “wipe out” the Turkish economy if Ankara did not immediately halt its military offensive.
Nevertheless, Erdogan was in the White House in November 2019, with Trump declaring himself a “big fan” of his.
With Trump’s return, the withdrawal of US troops from Syria and Iraq could be accelerated, analysts note. Thus, without American guardianship, the Turkish president will attempt a geopolitical reset in the region.
“The expectation is for an US policy reversal in the region and there will be a major effort to essentially convince Trump to withdraw US forces from Syria and end the relationship with the YPG,” Ulgen says.
As the director of research at Teneo consultancy Wolfango Piccoli says, if the US should withdraw from Iraq, it would be almost impossible for the Pentagon to continue to maintain a presence in northern Syria.
“This would remove a major irritant in US-Turkey ties, the United States’ support of the YPG. In such a scenario, Ankara could try to gain the upper hand in dealing with the YPG, but this would require Moscow’s consent. Erdogan would not automatically get a carte blanche.”
Israel and Palestine
The biggest source of tension may be the war in the Middle East and relations with Israel, as the gap between Ankara and Washington is huge.
Managing Israel will become more difficult for Turkey under the Trump administration, Ulgen says. “The Middle East policy broadly – not just on Palestine, but also on Iran – is going to be more unpredictable and possibly more dangerous, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu largely guiding US policies in the region.”
Piccoli believes that Erdogan will attempt to do what he did with Biden, “you put it in a sort of different line and you agree to disagree basically.”
“Obviously, it will be interesting to see how much pressure Trump will put on Netanyahu to end the conflict. But I think it’s one of those issues where the transactional relationship helps. You prefer to focus on areas of common interest and you sideline areas where you disagree.”
From afar
With two ongoing wars and Greek-Turkish differences in decline, the region will certainly not be on the American president’s priorities list.
“I don’t think the Trump administration will play much of a role, I don’t think the Biden administration played much of a role either,” Piccoli says. “I don’t think the two sides [Greece and Turkey] will look at Trump as a potential help in dealing with the matter, given that he is still seen as unpredictable by both.”
As for Greece, Piccoli believes that the interaction and the communication channels will be more complicated with Trump. “They don’t have the same connection they had with the Biden administration,” he says, but adds that it is a positive that Greece is one of the few NATO countries that spends more than 2% of GDP on defense, something Trump makes a priority. The hard part, he added, is that Greece has lost its ally in former senator Bob Menendez and has yet to find a comparable “replacement.”
