Relations tense, Biden to visit Ankara
WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday is set to become the most senior U.S. official to visit Turkey since a failed coup attempt injected new tensions into the U.S.-Turkey relationship and left the two NATO allies bickering over the extradition of a U.S.-based Islamic cleric.
With suspicions on both sides mounting, the United States is struggling to preserve its partnership with Turkey as Turkey entertains a closer relationship with Russia and fumes over the cleric it blames for orchestrating the July 15 failed coup attempt.
Biden faces a difficult mission when he travels to Ankara to try to smooth over recent strains: He comes bearing no assurances that the U.S. will agree to Turkey’s demand that it extradite the cleric — Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania. Instead, he’ll try to convey that the U.S. still needs and values Turkey as a key NATO ally, even amid signs that the U.S. and Turkish approaches to the region’s conflicts may be diverging — especially on Syria.
Tensions between the two countries were already bubbling under the surface before the attempted overthrow but have since burst into the open. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan alleged that the U.S. either supported or was involved in the coup attempt. As the U.S. issued denials, Turkish officials complained that Washington was slow to show support for Turkey’s government at its time of greatest need, even though the U.S. expressed support for Erdogan as the coup attempt was underway.
At the same time, Turkey has begun diplomatic flirtations with traditional U.S. foes Russia and Iran. This month Erdogan traveled to Moscow to try to boost ties and possibly even collaboration on ending Syria’s civil war, something Moscow has sought unsuccessfully with Washington. And after the Turkish foreign minister’s trip to Iran last week, Turkish media reported that Erdogan planned to visit Tehran on Wednesday — the same day he’s also slated to meet with Biden.
“Clearly President Erdogan is sending a message by getting closer to Russia and Iran that he’s unhappy with the attitude of the West,” said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkey analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Turkey’s still going to remain a NATO member and aspire for EU membership, but the atmosphere is worse than it was on July 14,” the day before the coup attempt.
A breakdown of ties to Turkey would be troublesome for the U.S., which is counting on Turkey to pursue the same approach to fighting the Islamic State militant group and addressing extremism across the Middle East. Straddling Europe and Asia, Turkey shares borders with Iraq, Iran and Syria, where the porous border has allowed Islamic State fighters into Turkey and would-be recruits into Syria.
Gulen, who has lived in the U.S. for years in self-imposed exile, has denied any involvement in the coup attempt, in which more than 270 people died, but Turkey’s government has insisted the U.S. return him to Turkey immediately.
President Barack Obama’s administration has said it wants more proof before considering extradition. Although Turkey has submitted extradition requests for Gulen, those requests have been based on previous alleged crimes by Gulen and not evidence of involvement in the coup attempt, senior administration officials said.
The U.S. is sending a Justice Department team to Turkey to help sort out the technical requirements of the request, said the officials, who briefed reporters ahead of Biden’s trip on condition of anonymity. They added that Biden planned to tell Turkey’s leaders that their public allegations of U.S. complicity won’t help their cause.
“People have an expectation that Gulen should be returned to Turkey immediately,” said Gulnur Aybet, who teaches international relations at Turkey’s Bahcesehir University. “If the extradition request is refused or delayed I’m afraid that’s going to have serious repercussions.”
The U.S. once looked optimistically at Erdogan as a Muslim leader interested in working with the U.S. and pursuing democratic governance. That optimism has been dampened as Erdogan has cracked down on the press and other freedoms and his government has put a premium on opposing outlawed Kurdish rebels — sometimes at the expense, in the Obama administration’s view, of focusing on the Islamic State.
Washington’s concerns about human rights and democracy in Turkey intensified after the failed coup, which led the government to detain or fire tens of thousands of police, soldiers, teachers and journalists.