Obama set to court Turks

US to seek Turkey’s help in Iraq and Afghanistan but Armenia promise may haunt visiting president

Rising to the challenge. US President Barack Obama reacts during a news conference in London yesterday. He aims to unlock Turkish good will during his upcoming visit there.

By Alistair Lyon - Reuters

BEIRUT – US President Barack Obama has created a chance to turn Turkey’s role in the wider Middle East to maximum advantage simply by going there so early in his term.

Turkey, a sometimes prickly NATO ally, holds no magic solutions, but it can help the United States in confrontations and conflicts that stretch from Israel to Afghanistan – via Syria, Iraq and Iran – and from Cyprus to the Caucasus.

Obama’s April 5-7 visit is a nod to Turkey’s regional reach, economic power, unrivaled diplomatic contacts and status as a secular Muslim democracy that has accommodated political Islam.

“It’s a symbolic piece of public diplomacy at a time maybe not of crisis, but great uncertainty in US-Turkish relations,” said Philip Robins, a Middle East expert at Oxford University.

Turkey will not be the venue for Obama’s promised major speech in a Muslim capital, but Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said his stop there was still a way to emphasize his message of reaching out to Muslims.

Obama may unlock the kind of good will generated by former US President Bill Clinton when he came to Turkey in 1999, but risks dissipating it all if he uses another G-word, genocide, to describe the fate of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

“With the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) under control in Iraq and the Americans at least not confronting Iran at the moment, the Armenian issue is the thorniest,” Robins said.

In his election campaign, Obama pledged to call the killings of Armenians genocide, and a resolution to this effect was introduced in the US House of Representatives last week. A similar resolution two years ago was approved in committee but dropped after Turkey denounced it as “insulting” and hinted at halting logistical support for the US war in Iraq.

Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks during World War One, but denies that up to 1.5 million died as a result of systematic genocide.

Ironically, Turkey and Armenia are perhaps as close as they have ever been to normalizing ties and reopening the border. Omer Taspinar, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, argues that accelerating this process could relieve Obama’s dilemma.

“This is exactly what President Obama needs,” he wrote, urging Turkey’s ruling party to show “visionary statesmanship.”

If the Armenian issue can be finessed, Obama has everything to gain from reinvigorated US-Turkish ties, particularly when he is making overtures to adversaries such as Iran and Syria.

He has already sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Middle East envoy George Mitchell on visits to Ankara.

“Turkey plays a pivotal role in this region,” said Karim Makdisi, at the American University of Beirut. “If you are going down this route of cooperation and dialogue, countries that have open channels like Turkey are the ones you want to talk to.”

Turkey, once on uneasy terms with many of its neighbors, now has ties that span fault lines in the Middle East and beyond.

“Who else can go to Moscow and Tbilisi, to Tehran and Tel Aviv? Who else can speak to Hamas in Damascus and also to the Egyptians and have good relations with the Saudis on top of that?” asked Hugh Pope, an International Crisis Group analyst.

US-Turkish ties suffered badly in 2003 when Ankara opposed the invasion of Iraq – and opinion polls show most Turks remain hostile to Washington – but former President George W. Bush’s administration began to repair the damage five years later.

“The United States is now cooperating with Turkey over Iraq and that has had amazing consequences,” Pope said, noting there had been no big clash for several months between Turkish forces and PKK separatist rebels, who have bases in northern Iraq.

Turkey, vital to Washington as a logistical hub for US forces that are set to ramp up in Afghanistan and draw down in Iraq, has its own vital interests in regional security.

“The breadth of relationships and the involvement of Turkey is huge,” said a Western official in Ankara, citing Turkish mediation between Syria and Israel among other examples.

“The United States is working very closely in sharing intelligence against the PKK and supports contacts between Turkey and the Kurdish regional government.”

President Abdullah Gul recently became the first Turkish head of state to visit Iraq in over 30 years. He won harsh words for the PKK from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and signaled Turkey’s growing acceptance of the autonomy Iraqi Kurds enjoy.

Steven Flanagan, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the United States welcomed Turkey’s stated willingness to play a bigger role in Central Asia and help more in Afghanistan, where it has more than 800 non-combat troops.

“Turkey will also want to hear more about the US withdrawal plans for Iraq,” he said.

Turkey declared this month it would consider mediating between Iran and the United States, although Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad later said there was no need for this.

With US-Iranian relations in flux after Obama’s offer of better ties last week drew an Iranian demand for US policy changes, Washington values Turkey’s input on its neighbor.

“Before the president takes any steps on Iran, he wants to hear from the Turks,” the Western official in Ankara said.

Turkish prime minister considering possible cabinet reshuffle after poll disappointment

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday he was considering whether to reshuffle his cabinet after his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered its worst election result since first coming to power in 2002.

The AKP won 39 percent of the municipal vote on Sunday, significantly lower than it had hoped for and making it harder to push through difficult European Union-driven reforms.

“It is always possible to carry out a reshuffle in the cabinet. We are in the assessment process, but it is not right to link a change to the election results,” Erdogan told a news conference.

He denied a newspaper report that several ministers had offered to resign over the election results.

The government was hurt by voters’ dissatisfaction over its handling of the economy, which shrank 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, pollsters said.

Analysts said the election result and the weakening economy were intensifying pressure on Erdogan to stop stalling on a loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund, saying Turkey needed funds to weather the global financial crisis.

Erdogan said he wanted to accelerate talks with the IMF and he would have an opportunity to meet IMF officials at this week’s G20 summit.

The lira currency firmed slightly against the dollar, to trade at 1.6430 on the interbank market.