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Turkey Threatens To JumpAnkara beat Congress; now it's taking on the Bush administration.

By Shmuel Rosner
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2007, at 2:36 PM ET
Recep Tayyip. Click image to expand.

"She's going to talk primarily about the U.S.-Turkey bilateral relationship and talk about the fact that it is a good, strong relationship," claimed State Department spokesman Sean McCormack in his daily briefing to the press Monday. "She" is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; the "talk" will happen on her trip to Turkey later this week; and that "strong relationship" is in trouble. The Turks have recently re-learned that they can influence America's decision-makers and policies, and they're going to use that power again.

Last month, the Turks and their friends in the administration defeated Nancy Pelosi, a determined, commanding speaker of the House. The passage of a resolution that would label the 1915 killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as "genocide" was postponed indefinitely. Pelosi's friends on the Democratic side of the House were kind enough to save her from even greater embarrassment: The sponsors asked her to delay the vote—and she agreed.

This was a political blunder. The speaker, as committed as anyone to passing the symbolic legislation, was humiliated by an even stronger and no less committed Turkish lobby. However—as often happens with acts of foolishness committed by Congress—the price will be paid by another branch of government, the executive. The check will be submitted later this week to its senior representative, Secretary Rice. A week later, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit an even higher authority, President George Bush, with the same purpose.

America lost twice in this congressional battle of political will—by losing the chance to gain the high moral ground by recognizing the Armenian tragedy and by angering an important ally. Turkey was able to benefit twice: It defeated the bill, but it was also handed an excuse to get angry by its earlier passage through the House foreign affairs committee. Now it can feel justified for its somewhat vindictive mood.

America, as a Pew Global Attitudes Survey showed just last week, is not the hottest political commodity in Ankara these days. "[N]egative views of the United States are indeed widespread and growing in Turkey," the study concluded. "Only 14% [of Turks] think the U.S. considers the interests of countries like Turkey when making foreign policy decisions," the study found. Ankara's demand that Washington increase its efforts to curb a wave of terror that originates in the Kurdish part of Iraq provides the U.S. administration with the perfect opportunity to show that it does "consider the interests of countries like Turkey."

The strategic relationship between Turkey and the United States has a long and complicated history. However, Turkey's importance to Washington can be easily, if somewhat simplistically, summed up in a slogan borrowed from the world of real estate: location, location, location.

Turkey is a bridge that connects parts of the former Soviet bloc to Europe and the oil of the East with the needs of the West; it is a neighbor to Syria and Iran and to the still-struggling Iraq; it is a candidate for European Union membership that is also well-connected to the countries of Central Asia. It is a former empire, with all the pride and tradition of regional responsibility that involves. And it's a moderate, democratic, Muslim country. Turkey—all things considered—is almost too good to be true.

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Shmuel Rosner blogs daily at Rosner's Domain.
Photograph of Recep Tayyip Erdogan by Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images.
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