Turkey and the Trump Philosophy
Connor Christensen 
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The United States and Turkey have a long history of political cohesion, and no era was ever so prolific in deal-making for the allies as that of the Trump administration. After nearly two decades of carving away at his country’s democratic freedoms, Turkish President Recep Erdogan has aligned with the anti-global policies exercised by American power in the last presidency. Foreign policy in the final years of the 2010s was marked by the resurgence in the US of an outdated transactional worldview, trailblazing a regression to old ideologies in allied Turkey and beyond.
Turkey’s geography lends itself to both valuable trade routes and tough policy choices. The Turks have a history of being pulled in three distinct ideological directions: that of the West, that of Russia, and that of the neighboring Muslim countries. The iron-fisted Ottoman Empire entered into the era of the nation-state with the formation of the secular Turkish Republic in 1923, ushering in a non-religious approach to international relations in accord with the modern world. Trying to align with the West while appeasing traditionalist Muslims both inside and outside of the country has proved to be convoluted and polarizing for Turkey. Erdogan’s reign has marked the recent decades with inconsistency, a regression from secular ideals, and a pivot towards Trump’s business-like foreign policy.
Since coming to power in 2003, Erdogan, with his conservative populist Justice and Development Party (AKP), has slowly etched away at the freedoms of the Turkish people while still attempting to stay in the good graces of his diverse neighbors. After Turkey was rejected entry into the EU, Erdogan shifted his attention east and fortified relations with fellow Muslim-majority nations in the 2010s. He abandoned the secular ideals of the Republic for a more religious rule of law. Erdogan’s blatant disregard for the country’s constitution finally boiled over with the 2016 coup attempt. The rebellion failed, and little has changed for the Turkish people. As policy experts Galib Bashirov and Ihsan Yilmaz explore in their article, the only shift in Erdogan’s policies following the coup d’etat has been an increase in inconsistency toward Turkey’s neighbors.
Despite the Republic’s recent distancing from Europe, Turkish policy has traditionally been predictable. That changed in 2017 with the inauguration of Donald Trump as the president of Turkey’s biggest NATO ally. Previously, the U.S. had primarily used a humanitarian pretext to justify global decision making. The new Trump administration instead practiced what Bashirov and Yilmaz call “transactionalism”. Strategist Rosa Brooks describes this transactionalism by writing “to Trump, U.S. alliances, like potential business partners in a real-estate transaction, should always be asked: ‘What have you done for me lately?'” What had traditionally been a broad, cautious ethos for U.S. international interactions transformed into chaotic negotiations as the norm, that failed to see the globe as an intertwined whole and flew with the presidential whims of the moment. Trump’s transactionalism was easy, and Erdogan embraced it as a means to flounder between the three unique neighboring regions.
The first impeachment case against Trump is a prime example of the transactionalism that Erdogan has recently emulated. Trump was accused of engaging in a quid pro quo agreement after asking a foreign government, Ukraine, to investigate a political rival. Trump’s actions went against any sense of global cooperation and focused instead on one momentary selfish pretext. In the years since the Ukraine scandal, Erdogan has exercised Trump’s reckless transactionalist strategy with alarming frequency.
This past April, Turkey opposed the build-up of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, with Erdogan even offering an official statement of support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. In response, Russia cancelled all flights to Turkey under the thin guise of a spike in coronavirus infections. This decimated the first months of the Turkish tourist season, further crippling an economy already on the brink of failure. Erdogan consequently wavered in his shortsighted anti-Russian stance. A few weeks later, a passenger aircraft was forced to land mid-flight in Belarus, a close ally of Russia, for the arrest of dissident journalist Roman Protasevitch. Erdogan saw his chance for redemption. After NATO initially reprimanded Russia for the violation of Belarusian human rights, Erdogan convinced his North Atlantic allies to ease up on their scolding. In only one month, Erdogan twice waffled his stance on both Russia and Europe, with his short-sighted transactionalism muddying Ukraine’s sense of security, aggravating Turkey’s already injured economy, and abusing western alliances.
The West criticizes Erdogan’s slide towards authoritarianism, the Middle East frowns on the nation’s secularization, and Russia remains a bullying brother that Turkey sometimes seeks to appease. The very geography that gives the Turkish nation such a diverse array of ideologically conflicting neighbors is the root reason that the West can’t simply write the power off. The strategically located sea lanes and proximity to conflict regions, not to mention the second largest standing army in NATO, is enough to make the West think twice before imposing aggressive condemnations or sanctions. Turkey is torn between three conflicting worlds, and Erdogan continues to utilize Trumpian transactionalism to appease them all. This irresponsible foreign policy was neither sustainable nor successful for the United States. Unrest abounds in Turkey as Erdogan fails to choose a singular direction.
Galib Bashirov & Ihsan Yilmaz, “The rise of transactionalism in international relations: evidence from Turkey’s relations with the European Union,” Australian Journal of International Affairs, 74:2, 165-184, DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2019.1693495 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10357718.2019.1693495 .
