A difficult start with Erdogan
While Donald Trump never missed a chance to say Recep Tayyip Erdogan was his friend, even to the Greek prime minister in the Oval Office, Joe Biden, in an interview with The New York Times last January, had openly called the Turkish president an “autocrat” and had maintained that the United States should support the Turkish opposition to help defeat him.
“What I think we should be doing is taking a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership,” Biden had told The Times’ top editors then. “He has to pay a price,” he said, adding that Washington should “embolden” the leaders of the Turkish opposition “to be able to take on and defeat Erdogan. Not by a coup, not by a coup, but by the electoral process.”
Biden’s statements had prompted an angry if belated response by Turkish presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin, who tweeted on August 16: “The analysis of Turkey by @ JoeBiden is based on pure ignorance, arrogance and hypocrisy. The days of ordering Turkey around are over. But if you still think you can try, be our guest. You will pay the price.”
The US president-elect had also criticized Turkish provocations in the Aegean and the wider region. “Unlike President Trump, Joe will call out Turkish behavior that is in violation of international law or that contravenes its commitments as a NATO ally, such as Turkish violations of Greek airspace,” said a statement released by his campaign office last month on his vision for US-Greek relations.
Another thorn in Biden’s relationship with Ankara is his stated interest in the Kurds, who he considers as having helped the US in the fight against the Islamic State. He thought that Donald Trump’s unexpected decision to withdraw from Syria was a major strategic blunder that left the Kurds exposed to Turkish aggression.
In tune with State Department and Pentagon bureaucracy, but also with the bipartisan consensus in the House and the Senate, Biden will adopt a hard line on the issue of Turkey’s acquisition and testing of the Russian-made S-400 air-defense system and it is likely that sanctions will be imposed.
Finally, the US president-elect will not intervene, as Trump allegedly has, to ensure lenient treatment for Erdogan associates involved in the case of Turkey’s Halkbank – the case is being tried in New York – for circumventing sanctions against Iran.