Tag Archives: politics

Foreign Policy

US-Turkey Relations: Arab Spring and the Search for Model Partnership

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This article by Kadir Ustun and Kilic Kanat was published as part of SETA DC Perspective series in May 2012.

US-Turkey relations in 2011 were in stark contrast to the “troubled” year of 2010. Policy debates in 2010 focused on the political and diplomatic fallout from the Mavi Marmara incident and Turkey’s “No” vote against the UN Security Council resolution on Iran. Policymakers in Washington called into question Turkey’s foreign policy direction and the intentions of its leadership. Extrication of the Turkish-Israeli relationship from the US-Turkey relationship represented a structural change. As the two sides were seeking ways to adjust to the new reality, the historic transformations sweeping the Middle East in 2011 created a new dynamic in the bilateral relationship. Creation of a special personal rapport between President Obama and Prime Minister Erdoğan was critical for the leadership on both sides to recognize once again that their countries’ relationship needed strengthening. Notwithstanding the differences on a variety of issues, the move toward forging a “model partnership” has begun.

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Foreign Policy

The Syrian Quagmire: What’s Holding Turkey Back?

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This article by Erol Cebeci and Kadir Ustun was published in Insight Turkey (Vol. 14 / No. 2 / 2012 pp. 13-21) 

The Assad regime has been playing all the diplomatic, political, and security cards it has accumulated over the past several decades. While keeping the violence under a certain threshold on a daily basis so as not to provoke immediate international action, the regime has benefited from the entangled and often conflicted international interests in Syria. The opposition has been unable to deal a serious blow to the regime and international pressure has so far yielded no major results. Though calls for international and regional action have recently intensified, there exists no clear international leadership or consensus on how to handle Syria. The Arab League and Turkey, along with other countries, have created the “Friends of Syria” group after the failure of the UN Security Council resolution on Syria, but Russian and Iranian backing for the Assad regime is seriously limiting options. Given its support for the people against authoritarian regimes during the Arab Spring and its anti- Assad stance, expectations for Turkey to “do something” are increasingly more pronounced. So, what’s holding Turkey back?

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