Alliance on the line over pastor standoff
US may have to do without Turkey in the Middle East after Trump’s latest move
President Donald Trump’s latest move against Turkey has made an already bad relationship worse, raising the risk the US may have to do without a longtime ally in the Middle East.
Trump’s decision on Friday to double tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium could sink the nation’s struggling economy and drive President Recep Tayyip Erdogan into Russia’s arms. It could also threaten US strategic interests including the military base in Incirlik, an important staging area in the fight against terrorism.
Erdogan pledged that the American economic actions wouldn’t influence Turkish actions in a New York Times oped published on Friday, saying his country “established time and again that it will take care of its own business if the United States refuses to listen” and that Trump’s unilateral actions would only undermine American security interests.
“Before it is too late, Washington must give up the misguided notion that our relationship can be asymmetrical and come to terms with the fact that Turkey has alternatives,” Erdogan wrote. “Failure to reverse this trend of unilateralism and disrespect will require us to start looking for new friends and allies.
The potential implications have set off a debate inside Trump’s administration, according to an administration official familiar with the deliberations. Some fear the consequences of walking away from Turkey, while others say the country’s strategic importance has diminished and ignoring Erdogan’s behaviour will only embolden him, said the official, who discussed the issue on condition of anonymity.
“The administration seems to be willing to accept a scenario in which Turkey — as the economic crisis escalates and the nationalist rhetoric we’ve heard come out of Erdogan escalates — that Turkey is no longer a strategic ally,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Aaron Stein, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council, said Erdogan may have overestimated his value in Trump’s eyes.
Incirlik’s importance
US access to the Incirlik “is important, but not nearly as important as the Turks think it is,” Stein said. He added that if Turkey were to retaliate by closing the military base, such a move could backfire because it would anger other Nato allies active in the region.
While relations between the two countries have deteriorated for years, they began to spiral downward in recent weeks over Turkey’s detention of a Christian evangelical pastor, Andrew Brunson, who’s facing espionage and terrorism allegations related to the failed 2016 coup. The minister’s plight has been a cause among religious conservatives, one of the US president’s most loyal constituencies.