Reflecting on Turkish-American Relations in a Second Trump Term
The election of Donald J. Trump for a second term marks a major shift in global politics. It appears that the neoliberal era, marked by free trade and liberal political norms, has come to an end. It is difficult to predict what will come in its place, but the new era seems to be heavy on civilizational politics and economic fragmentation.
One country that seems excited about the coming order is Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been governing for almost a quarter century and will likely remain in power for years to come. This paper will assess Erdoğan’s time in power, dividing Turkish foreign policy into three distinct periods: 2002 to 2012, 2013 to 2023, and the third marked by the current alignment. It will then use this as a basis for thinking about Turkish-American relations in the coming years. I will argue that, while the Erdoğan and Trump governments could find common areas in the short term, their political bases are far apart, which could create difficulties for the alliance in the medium to long run.
The First Phase: 2002-2012
The first phase (2002 to 2012) was characterized by political and economic liberalization. The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) rose to power in these years as a reformist group. Its leaders broke from the far-right Islamist tradition and created a centrist movement heavily inspired by third way liberalism in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as Christian Democracy in Europe. They were to be social moderates who also embraced the neoliberal economic paradigm of the time. The centerpiece of their foreign policy was Turkey’s accession bid to the European Union. Its Islamist roots enabled the AK Party government to maintain its conservative base, while its new stance allowed it to forge a bond with liberal and progressive elements at home and abroad.
Today this period is often thought of as the golden age of Turkey-US relations, but that was not evident at the time. The AK Party was ambivalent about former President George W. Bush, his “War on Terror,” and Washington’s liberal interventionists. Turkey famously did not allow the United States to use Turkish territory in its ground invasion of Iraq in 2003, and neoconservative was a dirty word in Ankara. Still, Turkey’s new government was relatively accommodating to American interests and focused on economic development and EU reforms at home. In 2008, the AK Party’s leadership was ebullient about the election of former President Barack Hussein Obama, whom they saw as an agent for reconciliation with the Islamic world.
The optimism culminated with the Arab Spring protests and the rise of the Turkish model as an American-approved prescription for the Arab world. Yet, Ankara and Washington were not able to shape these movements. The AK Party came to be dominated by Erdoğan, who sharpened its extractive and exclusionary aspects, losing the support of liberals and facing opposition from civil society. Turkey’s relations with Israel also worsened with Erdoğan’s blowout against former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at Davos in 2009 and with a flotilla that Turkish organizations sent to Gaza in 2010 that was raided by Israeli security forces. Liberal Turkey was tipping into a more reactionary place conducive to the centralization of power. The era ended with the Gezi Park protests of 2013, a nationwide progressive movement against the AK Party’s rule. Erdoğan suppressed the protests forcefully and accused Western powers of instigating them. The same year, a bitter feud erupted between Erdoğan and his erstwhile ally, Fethullah Gülen, leading to waves of purges throughout the next decade.
The Second Phase: 2013-2023
The second phase of Turkish foreign policy (2013 to 2023) was characterized by strident self-assertion, often bordering on revisionism. This was also a time when the AK Party government captured the country’s institutions and built its own political regime within the husk of the failing Kemalist order. The coup attempt in 2016 solidified this transformation and allowed Erdoğan to create the “executive presidency,” which effectively combines the powers of the judiciary, legislature, and the executive.
The Obama White House was souring on Erdoğan over his authoritarian politics, but US-Turkey relations really declined over the Syrian civil war. The countries tried to cooperate at first but later pursued their own, often conflicting goals. The United States worked with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-affiliated People’s Defense Units to defeat ISIS, while Turkey worked with Islamist groups against the Assad regime and the People’s Defense Units. The Erdoğan palace also publicly implied that the United States was responsible for the 2016 coup attempt and blamed Washington for its refusal to extradite Gülen, whom it believed to have masterminded the operation.
Turkey sought to curb its dependence on the Transatlantic Alliance, pouring more money and attention into its indigenous defense and developing deeper relationships with revisionist powers. Ankara bought top-shelf military technology from Russia and became more serious about building up its relationship with China. The EU accession process was effectively over, but Erdoğan maintained strong relations with leaders in Eastern Europe, such as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary and President Aleksandar Vučić of Serbia, and eventually Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy. Turkey supported Ukraine in its defense against Russia, but it often echoed Russian talking points about the causation and possible resolution to the war.
From the perspective of Turkish nationalists, the most exciting aspect of these years was Turkey’s growing footprint across the world. The Turkish military conducted several incursions into Syria, taking and occupying territory in that civil war, and staged operations in Iraq, pursuing PKK targets and thereby solidifying its presence in that country. It also established military bases in Somalia, Qatar, and Libya. Under the “Blue Homeland” doctrine, Turkey acted far more aggressively to set its maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the Caucasus, Turkey backed Azerbaijan’s military to take back Nagorno-Karabakh. The effort began in 2020, re-erupted in 2022, and culminated with a complete Azerbaijani victory in 2023. A growing array of Turkish defense contractors and military leaders also built relationships across Africa and Central Asia.
Perhaps Turkey’s most risky policies during this period, however, were in the realm of the economy. Turkey experimented with alternatives to neoliberal orthodoxy like ending central bank independence, cutting interest rates in the face of inflation, and boosting spending. The resulting infusion of cash into the economy allowed the Erdoğan palace to make it through contentious elections and referenda.[1] The Minister of Finance, Berat Albayrak, who also happened to be Erdoğan’s son-in-law, framed his economic policy as a struggle against the American-dominated global financial system. He claimed that Turkey would look for new trade partners and sources of finance, but he was never able to articulate a clear alternative policy. Turkey did boost export numbers and saw growth across low-value-added sectors, but this also resulted in an inflationary cascade and an exodus of investors. The standard of living dropped for the vast majority of Turkey’s citizens. In 2020, Albayrak resigned in a huff, and successive economic teams were reduced to crisscrossing the Gulf monarchies to scrape up funding.
It was mostly this economic trajectory that ultimately stopped Turkey’s revisionist streak. As the country was approaching the 2023 elections, Erdoğan increased public spending, campaigned on a muscular revisionist platform, and prepared for a return to orthodoxy.
The Third Phase: 2023-Present
Since Erdoğan won the general elections of 2023, Turkey has entered the third phase of foreign policy in the AK Party era. In this phase, the presidential palace appears determined to expand its domestic project, deepening its dominance over institutions, politics, and culture, but its economic and foreign policies have undergone significant changes. The presidential palace has curtailed, or at the very least postponed, its revisionist ambitions. Erdoğan signaled the changes with the appointment of three cabinet ministers: Mehmet Şimşek as the minister of finance, Hakan Fidan as the minister of foreign affairs, and Ali Yerlikaya as the minister of the interior. Another significant appointment was İbrahim Kalın, hitherto the presidential spokesperson and chief strategist, as the head of the National Intelligence Organization. All four men are known for unwavering loyalty to Erdoğan, and all have reputations for being heavy on policy and dry on politics.
The sharpest change in this period has been in economic policy. Under Şimşek, Turkey has been determined to undo the damage to its credibility in the global financial community, bring down inflation, and re-attract investment. To this end, the Central Bank has raised interest rates to 50 percent and kept them there until December 2024, while Şimşek has implemented tight fiscal discipline. The brunt of the burden has been borne by wage earners and consumers, which cost the government dearly in the 2024 regional elections, but Erdoğan seems determined to stay the course. Despite the country’s persistent problems, most economists expect inflation to come under control in the coming years, and for the country to continue developing into a significant industrial power. The reversal in policy therefore seems to have averted catastrophe for the Turkish economy.
On the diplomatic front, Turkey is trying to engage the West in a rapprochement and started by lifting its veto on Sweden’s membership in NATO. This was not a return to the liberalism of the first decade of the twenty-first century, but rather a step back from the precipice of the revisionism of the 2010s. It also helps that Fidan is a much stronger foreign minister than Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and can build authority without engaging in civilizational polemics with his Western counterparts. Ankara’s various actors are no longer free to engage in international spats but have to coordinate tightly with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In August 2024, Fidan was invited to the Gymnich meeting of EU foreign ministers, and he appears to enjoy the respect of political actors in Washington.
Leading up to the 2024 US elections, the Western world was holding its breath, and Turkey’s rapprochement yielded few policy results. Some Western countries lifted some restrictions on weapon exports to Turkey after Sweden acceded to NATO, but nothing concrete on customs union modernization or Turkey’s return to the F-35 program. Western countries also have not seriously entertained Erdoğan’s offers to mediate in conflicts like Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. Still, Turkey was now on firm footing. With the spectacular return of Trump to the White House, the liberal objections to Erdoğan’s conduct at home have evaporated. Erdoğan and his team look like respectable, mature strategists.
The question is how this third phase of Turkish foreign policy will interact with the inherently unpredictable, yet fast-approaching second Trump presidency.
Breaking into the Trump Era
Trump’s return to the White House was anything but guaranteed. Ankara’s policy elite have consistently favored him and wanted him to win the elections, but they prepared for a Democratic victory. Erdoğan’s 2023 team—and his entire third phase approach—was designed to calm liberal elites in Washington and Brussels and extract favorable deals on technology and trade. With those concerns no longer relevant, the question now is whether Ankara will be able to connect with the incoming Trump team in a meaningful manner.
A second Trump presidency could make the world more comfortable for Erdoğan and the type of politics he represents. Liberal norms and multilateral institutions are likely to thin out further in the years ahead, while national sovereignty, military might, industrial brawn, and sheer popularity are going to be more pronounced. Many in Ankara anticipate a time when borders will be redrawn and historic deals will be made by sovereign leaders negotiating behind closed doors. This is why the political elites in the AK Party era have been consistently sympathetic to Trump’s ascendance and strictly critical of the culture and policies of the Democratic Party.
Some strategists in the Trump-Erdoğan space have been arguing that the geopolitical interests of Turkey and the United States align very strongly, potentially yielding a powerful partnership. There are good reasons for thinking this way. In the short term, Turkey could help Trump’s team to bring about rapprochement with Russia and end the Ukraine war. While Turkey will likely protest against Washington’s enabling of Israel, it could negotiate for a US withdrawal from Syria and greater control in Iraq, the Eastern Mediterranean, and other territories where the United States is involved. Trump also seems to be interested in continuing to roll back Iranian influence across the Middle East, which has already worked in Ankara’s favor and could continue to be an area of cooperation.
Where would things go from there? Discounting some of the cultural factors and looking at the map of the Middle East from a military and economic perspective, Turkey-US interests could continue to align. Turkey is the only power in the region with a large population, wide industrial base, agricultural potential, powerful and increasingly innovative military, and an ambitious trading culture. It has long-standing institutional links to the United States and could help it reach areas where American influence is not as welcome, such as Africa, Central Asia, and the Muslim world at large. Some might consider a closer Turkey-Israel relationship to be icing on this cake, acting as an anchor for American power in the region. This kind of realignment could also help Erdoğan achieve some of the aims he sought in the second phase of his foreign policy.
The problem is that this kind of a future has no political basis in Turkey, and considering the latest trends, nor in the United States. For American policymakers of the past decades, Turkey policy and Middle East policy have been in slightly separate categories, but that is quickly changing. The spectacular downfall of the Assad regime and the ascendance of Turkish-backed rebels in Damascus, make Turkey part of the Middle East in a way that it was not before. If Turkey’s efforts continue to yield fruit, the “Shia Crescent” could soon be replaced by a more popular and more populous Sunni force. Neither Erdoğan’s government nor the nascent Syrian government are likely to emphasize their plans on Israel at this critical juncture, but they will in time place their weight on the side of Palestinian sovereignty. In Israel, meanwhile, far-right movements are now in control of the state and are moving ever more aggressively in their wars and settlement projects. One might think it would be Washington to work with both sides to avert the inevitable clash, but there too the political ground has shifted in ways that Turkey might not be ready for.
Erdoğan and his team are used to being the nationalist rebels in an otherwise liberal environment. For over two decades, Islamist operatives like Kalın and Fidan excelled at building relationships with establishment types in Washington. Being the Muslims in the post-Christian West, they could always count on a certain degree of deference, even sympathy. They were prone to give lectures and press their counterparts on issues like the PKK in Syria, Gülen, the coup attempt of 2016, or simply the “multipolar order.” This was even the case in Trump’s first term when the president was surrounded by handlers like Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and H. R. McMaster who reined him in. These were also the kinds of people the Erdoğan team was used to dealing with. They were liberals who had trained themselves to look past national and religious symbolism, focusing on immediate economic indicators and security cooperation. Yes, Turkey’s elite acted in strange ways, but they were crucial NATO allies and usually took their commitments seriously.
The second Trump term could be significantly different, with a team that amplifies Trump’s nationalism and converts it into policy. Trump’s second term picks are figures like Tulsi Gabbard and Marco Rubio, floated for director of national intelligence and secretary of state respectively. They are as strong friends of Greece and Cyprus as they are critics of Turkey. Pete Hegseth, an Army veteran who might head the Pentagon, is close enough to Christian nationalist groups to have actual crusader tattoos. Even if some of these picks do not make it through the confirmation process, there is no coincidence that their type comes up repeatedly. The premise of reactionary right-wing movements is that they actually cater to the civilizational sentiments of their base. Over time, it becomes difficult to separate political theater from actual policy. When looked at in this way, there are serious conflicts between an “America First” base and the Islamist, national revivalist base in Turkey.
Officials in an “America First” White House might respect Turkey’s success on the ground, diplomatic outreach, and experience, but they will also be able to tune into its ideological undercurrent. Long confined to the fringes of politics, the MAGA right is familiar with undertaking long political projects and will be more likely to see, and be alarmed by, Ankara’s vision for the region. Turkey has proven that it can connect with far-right movements in Hungary and Italy, but a similar transformation in the United States means a systemic shift, pulling Turkey into areas of actual irreconcilable differences. This could be in Israel, but also elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Greece and Turkey joined NATO together in 1952, and American diplomacy has long been careful about maintaining the delicate balance between the two countries. Trump’s new team might not be similarly inclined. Toward the end of Trump’s second term, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo already had tense relations with Turkey and began to favor Greece, visiting American military bases on the islands. It is possible that this dynamic could strengthen under a second Trump presidency.
So, while Erdoğan’s charisma may have some weight with Trump, the political movements that the two men are embedded in are not very compatible. Relations between the countries could improve in the short term but are unlikely to enjoy stability in the coming years.
Image Credit: President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pose for a photo with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Mrs. Emine Erdogan Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019, at the South Portico of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)
[1] The economist Ümit Akçay has argued that this was, at its root, a contest between the country’s two capital groups: the smaller, more labor-intensive capital that borrowed in lira (especially relating to the construction sector, exporters), and the larger, more globally integrated groups that borrowed in foreign currencies.