How has Turkey’s position changed after Biden took office on 20 January 2021
Joe Biden took office on Jan 20th following an implausible and undesirable set of events never seen in the whole US history, before. It is a known fact that Turkey or President Erdoğan rather, had established a unique system to run relations with the US, based on mutual connection with Trump (and his son-in-law actually) and succeeded to manage the situation in a manner. Now that Biden has taken office the question is, “How has Turkey position changed after Biden took office on 20 January 2021”.
It is clearly known that Biden would like to strengthen ties with NATO on the contrary to the approach and implementation adopted by Trump. NATO was founded against the Soviet Union after World War II. Turkey and Greece were granted memberships by Nato in 1952 in order to prevent the Soviets from having presence in the Mediterranean. Despite the fact that the Soviets officially disbanded in early 1992 Russia has always been the main adversary for NATO.
Despite many unfavorable developments between Turkey and the western world Turkey is still considered to be an element of balance against Russia in the region it is located. On the other hand, Turkey has also shown close cooperation with Russia, in recent years in particular. Meanwhile, purchase of S-400 missiles from Russia has been quite costly for Turkey it goes without saying as The US Congress also placed Turkey under CAATSA sanctions. Within this framework, The US Congress has placed Turkey under CAATSA sanctions for obtaining said missiles. Needless to say, the biggest sanction among all was the fact that Turkey was removed from the F-35 fighter aircraft program (of which it is a partner manufacturer) and its jets which had already been paid for were confiscated.
Under the light of above developments one can say Turkey seems to have taken a defensive position as expressed by Defense Minister AKAR who has said, “We want to return to the F-35 program, but we can’t give back the S-400s”.
When we look at the other side of the medallion we can clearly see that important members of Biden’s team as well as Biden himself know Turkey quite closely and without any doubt they cannot be said to sympathize with Turkey.
In fact, a statement made by Foreign Minister Tony Blinken even before taking office started with the expression “Turkey is a so-called strategic partner…” clearly showing the kind of approach adopted by some in the US administration. So it is obvious once again that several cabinet members in US administration are observed to be looking at Turkey with prejudice and at the Erdogan administration, in particular.
Then again it does not seem very likely that Erdogan will be able to run a relationship with Biden as he did with Trump. We already know Erdogan wants all key issues to be addressed at the level of leaders and brought directly to him. Biden, on the other hand, says he believes in the state of institutions, and it seems that he will give his ministers and key team members the initiative. Both the S-400/F-35 issue and this difference in working understanding indicate that difficult days await Turkey in relations with the United States. To recap, it not many would be surprised to see Biden taking his first action on Turkey regarding the S-400/F-35 issue.
And we’ll hold our breath and watch the rest.
