Erdoğan’s Visit to Washington

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will pay an official visit to the United States in the second half of May.
 
This will follow three recent visits of US Secretary of State John Kerry to Turkey. Many pundits tend to interpret Erdoğan’s visit as a clear demonstration of Turkey’s growing profile in American eyes, particularly after the Israeli apology for the murder of Turkish nationals in the Mavi Marmara raid back in May 2010.
 
It is likely that Erdoğan will confer with Barack Obama on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the ongoing civil war in Syria and Turkey’s new initiative to find a settlement fort he Kurdish issue. All these developments concern the security interests of both countries and it is urgent for both capitals to unite around common positions. Starting with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, it seems that Washington expects Ankara to help bring the two factions of the Palestinian community closer to each other, somehow prior to a concentrated effort to revitalize the dormant peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Last week the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, was in Turkey. It is also known that Erdoğan will visit Gaza after his Washington trip.
 
It would be a spectacular achievement on the part of Turkish officials to help mend the fences between Abbas and the Hamas authorities before the Palestinians sit around the negotiating table with the Israelis. It is also notable that Erdoğan plans to visit Gaza after he meets with Obama in May. It is not difficult to expect that Erdoğan will do his best to help convince the Hamas leadership to reconcile with Fatah and adopt a softer approach towards Israel. Erdoğan will also convey the American messages to the Hamas leadership, of which stopping violent acts, recognizing the legitimate existence of Israel and abiding by the previous agreements struck between the Palestinian Authority and Israel stand out.
 
What is important in this context is that Obama seems to have invested a lot in the Turkish stewardship of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Turkey’s involvement in this process, particularly after the apology and improvement of Turkish-Israeli relations, might help produce a catalytic impact on the solution of the decades-long Arab-Israeli dispute. The point is not that Turkey has now become more important than the Quartet or Egypt in this process, yet Turkey’s involvement appears to be vital.
 
Second, it is expected that Erdoğan will try to convince the Obama administration to take on a more assertive stance on the ongoing civil war in Syria. It is no secret that Ankara feels quite frustrated with the American inaction and passivity regarding Syria. The arguments against the empowerment of the fractious opposition figures might strike some sympathetic chords in the American and Turkish capitals, yet Turkish authorities seem to be fed up with the argument that a negotiated solution to the crisis, in particular involving the Bashar al-Assad regime, is still within reach and that increasing military aid to Syrian opposition circles might end up in the hands of radical Islamists. To the Turkish government, the strengthening of radical Islamists in Syria has been the direct outcome of American hesitation to side with the opposition forces through all means available. The longer the Americans shy away from providing credible military support to opposition forces, the easier the radical Islamists increase their foothold inside the country and the more likely it is that Syria will evolve into a unstable and fractious entity in the post Assad era.
 
Third, it is quite likely that the Turkish prime minister will inform the US leader about the latest of the ongoing peace process concerning Turkey’s Kurdish problem. If there is one geopolitical lesson that Turkey should draw from the recent tectonic changes in the Middle East, it is that Turkey’s ability to help shape the regional developments and mitigate the negative consequences of the so-called Kurdish spring on Turkey’s internal peace will increase following a historic peace with Kurdish communities at home and abroad. Provided that Turkey’s efforts to get rid of the Kurdish problem at home and to come closer to the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq do not end up in a neo-Ottomanist Turkish empire in the Middle East and weaken Iraq’s territorial integrity, the Americans will be on board. A stable and powerful Turkey in the region, which is at peace with the most pro-Western political communities in the Middle East, namely the Israelis and the Kurds, is in the interest of the United States.