Joe Biden’s administration is linking F-16 fighter jet sales to Türkiye with Turkish ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership bid and this “seriously upsets” Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Sunday as he addressed a press conference after a G-20 summit in the Indian capital New Delhi.
The Turkish leader’s lament is not the first occasion he expressed Ankara’s discomfort with Washington’s insistence on the correlation and highlights an undercurrent that seems to pervade the relations between the two NATO allies.
Experts say that a firm distrust on both sides is constantly undermining any tentative attempt at progress in Turkish-U.S. ties already made fragile by a slew of unresolved disagreements and even a potential change in leadership in Washington will not be enough to upend the scales.
“The evolution of the Turkish-U.S. relationship since the 90s reveals a shifting dynamic where Washington lost its dominant advantage over Türkiye after the latter began prioritizing its national interests over its ally’s,” argued Ferhat Pirinççi, an expert on Middle East and U.S. foreign policy and professor of International Politics at Uludağ University.
For the president of Altınbaş University and a member of the Presidential Security and Foreign Policies Council, Çağrı Erhan, Washington also cannot trust Türkiye because of its relationship with Russia and is further concerned because “the Türkiye they’re dealing with is not the one they had been used to for decades.”
Over the years, the more Türkiye’s strategic importance increased, the more the nature of its relationship with the U.S. changed, which has fueled a negativity that today persists in almost all U.S. institutions, from the Oval Office to the Pentagon, CENTCOM and EUCOM to the House of Representatives and especially the Congress, Pirinççi explained.
According to Erhan, Türkiye in the past “danced to Washington’s tune” due to certain military and economic dependencies, but the Türkiye of today can “turn its back on any prompts from the United States about its own resources, defense, economy or energy and act independently for its national interests in the Middle East or Africa.”
A string of incidents contributed to this strong resistance within the U.S. establishment, Pirinççi said.
He listed the critical turning point that was the March 1 Declaration in 2003 – which rejected hosting foreign troops in Türkiye during the Iraqi invasion – the 2013 Gezi protests, the pullover of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) trucks, the attempt to arrest then-spy chief Hakan Fidan, and finally, the Gülenist Terror Group’s (FETÖ) coup attempt and its international fallout.
Erhan cited Türkiye’s exclusion from the F-35 program, Sweden’s stalled NATO membership, which Ankara objected to over security concerns until it agreed to ratify it in July, and the FETÖ ringleader’s continued residence in the U.S. as other major issues that deepen the gap of trust.
There is also the critical problem of Washington’s stance in Syria, where the terrorist group that stokes instability, strives to bring one-third of the country under its yoke and has its barrel trained on Türkiye, is in alliance with the U.S., Erhan said.
“Moral support, arms and consultancy supplied to this group by the U.S. undermine Türkiye’s efforts to eradicate terrorism there, too,” he stressed.
Especially in its ties to Russia, Türkiye has a message to the West and it is that this relationship is critical for the globe, African nations below the hunger line, as well as Western countries receiving nearly 45% of their grains from Russia “because there is no other NATO member besides Türkiye that is in dialogue with Russia,” Erhan said.
But, he continued, as long as this relationship is upheld at their current strategic level, the U.S. perception of it cannot change into anything positive.
Pirinççi, too, believes the sides are currently in a limbo where neither Washington nor Ankara want a new source of tension yet remain far from a solution to their problems.
And yet, he said, the strange thing about Turkish-U.S. ties is their interests clash in numerous fields but are also mutually beneficial in places like Africa, Caucasus, the Ukraine war and even Central Asia, “but Washington’s reluctance to cooperate with Türkiye hinders cooperation in these files, as well.”
Two decades ago in the Iraqi war, today in the Syrian civil war, the Karabakh dispute and especially the Ukraine crisis where Türkiye is one of the most influential actors, Washington refuses to work with Ankara, even when Ankara’s participation would be to the benefit of both U.S. and NATO, Pirinççi pointed out.
“This reluctance from the U.S. is simultaneously a major handicap, where otherwise its support to the Turkish defense industry and regional engagement would benefit NATO, and an obstruction to the growth of bilateral relations,” Pirinççi said.
In the past year, both sides have shown the will to officially turn on a new leaf, Pirinççi believes, but the weight of accumulated grievances looms large because “Türkiye’s increasing strategic significance leaves little room for compromise or concessions in its relations with the U.S.”
Bridging the trust gap is possible only if both sides engage in meaningful and continuous dialogue on the level of leaders, Erhan said, calling for an urgent and formal one-on-one between Erdoğan and Biden.
Here, Pirinççi stressed the onus to take the first step for change falls on the U.S., which must stop treating Türkiye “like it’s still the 90s.”
The F-16 deal, cutting off support to PKK/YPG terrorists, or even a couple of FETÖ extraditions present opportunities for positive strides. Without progress here, however, the foundational problem of distrust will persist and perhaps the sides won’t be having new crises on their hands but they will also not be able to forget the old wounds, he said.
Erhan doesn’t believe Washington would change its current position, either on Turkish-Russian relations or any other crisis.
Similarly, he pointed out that doubt in the collective consciousness over the U.S. role in the July 15 attempt, their continuous weapons supply to Greece, construction of a military hub in Alexandroupoli (Dedeağaç), and lifting of the arms embargo for the Greek Cypriot administration are among the factors holding Türkiye back from viewing its alliance in a positive outlook.
For Pirinççi, the executive structure and congressional pressure on the president, especially from certain groups like the Greek and Armenian lobbies there, are what primarily lie beneath this unaccommodating stance.
Echoing Pirinççi’s claim and citing Erdoğan’s new postelection foreign policy of “not adding to the problems if they cannot be resolved with diplomacy,” Erhan concluded: “Until the U.S. elections in November 2024, Türkiye will be after doing the groundwork for conflict-solving, at least in the future, while trying to keep things from going further south.”
