All the harmony between Erdogan and Biden
Despite everything, Erdogan's Turkey confirms itself as important and useful to Biden's United States. Here because. Giuseppe Gagliano's analysis
Despite the Turkish president being called an autocrat by Biden, and despite the fact that American institutions have defined the elimination of the Armenians as a veritable genocide, the meeting in Brussels ended with a statement that was anything but surprising from the Turkish president, claiming that there are no problems with the United States that cannot be solved. On the other hand, the American president himself confirmed that the meeting with his Turkish counterpart was productive.
Despite Turkey's increasingly assertive role in the Middle East, despite Ankara's opposition to US support for Kurdish fighters in Syria and, finally, despite the US we penalized Turkey for purchasing the missile defense system Russia's S-400, it seems that peace has returned between the two leaders. Could it be due to the miraculous virtues of American democracy? Or perhaps more realistically for realpolitik's sake?
WHAT TURKEY DOES FOR THE UNITED STATES
What exactly are we alluding to? Reference is made to the possibility that Turkey can maintain a military presence in Afghanistan thanks to the logistical and financial support of the United States; reference is made of course to the fact that Turkey also has a potential role to play in Biden's broader strategy of rallying allies to oppose the influence of China and Russia, despite the fact that Erdogan has entered into a new currency exchange deal to be 3.6 billion dollars with Beijing.
But we are also alluding to the fact that Turkey is an opponent of Russia in the Syrian and Libyan chessboard, where in fact Turkish drones and air defenses have been fundamental in repelling Russia's allies.
But finally we are also alluding to the fact that Turkey sided with Ukraine, thus supporting the US in an anti-Russian function.
Ultimately, if the policy of the Turkish president may appear volatile and contradictory, in reality the foreign policy choices of the Turkish president have always been marked by a real unscrupulousness and a political calculation aimed at exclusively protecting not only the interests of Turkey and of his projection of power, but often also the interests of that narrow oligarchy that revolves around the Turkish president.
APPEARANCE AND SUBSTANCE
So, beyond appearances – often the result of electoral calculations -, the substance of relations between America and Turkey follows the same lines of force as those of Trump. As indeed those with the other autocrat, namely with Mohammed bin Salman.
Nothing surprising from a historical point of view: at the end of the Second World War – and especially during the Cold War – democracies have always needed, for geopolitical and geo-economic reasons (read oil and more …), autocratic systems, whether or not they were in the Middle East, in Africa or in Latin America.
Perhaps it should also be explained to the various authors of the numerous civic education manuals disseminated in high schools… as well as at the Miur.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/erdogan-biden-rapporti-turchia-stati-uniti/ on Wed, 23 Jun 2021 07:44:45 +0000.