Time for President Donald Trump to Bury the U.S Turkey Alliance

The U.S.-Turkey alliance is dead. Certainly, as long as Tayyip Recep Erdoğan is Turkey’s president. And probably well beyond that. The current dispute over the imprisonment of evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson dominates the news. But more important is an increasing divergence in the two nations’ geopolitical interests.

The traditional claim that Ankara was a “vital” partner long reflected the triumph of hope over experience. During World War II Ankara learned from its previous mistake and avoided joining the losing side. Then Turkey enlisted with the Western allies against the Soviet Union.

However, Washington’s enthusiastic endorsement of Ankara’s value reflected the expectation that the Turkish military always would be able to impose its will. For instance, after the Turkish parliament refused in 2003 to permit Washington to open a second front against Iraq from the north, George W. Bush’s Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, urged the Turkish armed services to make their views known to their nominal superiors, the civilians. But the time when the military could impose its will—even remove and execute an elected prime minister, as it did in 1961—was over.

Nevertheless, the United States saw the traditional Kemalist state, courtesy Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as Washington’s ideal, secular, pro-American democracy. In reality, however, the military’s repeated intrusions into politics, backed by multiple authoritarian restrictions even in the best of times, meant that Turkey fell far short of a constitutional republic.

Moreover, the government was secular and pro-American only so long as it was undemocratic. Many of its people were religious, seriously so, but were restricted from living their faith in public. Polls showed Turks to be among the world's most hostile to America. Earlier governments kept both impulses in check. Erdoğan was careful and cautious leading up to his first election victory in 2002 and the gradual consolidation of his power over the military. In time, however, he not only loosed these passions, but he also inflamed and used them to win electoral victories. 

In dealing with other nations, Washington often has overlooked a lack of shared values or accepted a lack of common interests. However, Erdoğan's Turkey increasingly lacks both. Which helps explain the dramatically worsening crisis in relations sparked by Ankara's detention of some fifteen Americans, most notably Brunson, on dubious terrorism charges growing out of the coup attempt two years ago. Meanwhile, thousands of Turks have been arrested based on even less.