By: Laura Rozen
June 21, 2010 03:59 PM EDT
As Turkish-Israeli relations deteriorate, the Obama administration is in a bind.
Congress is expressing alarm and demanding that Turkey pay a price for its leaders’ increasingly anti-Israel rhetoric in the wake of Israel’s interception of a Gaza aid flotilla last month and Turkey’s recent vote against a U.S.-backed Iran sanctions resolution.
Turkey, meanwhile, is demanding that Israel apologize for killing its citizens in the flotilla and has expressed dismay that the U.S. did not take up an Iranian nuclear fuel swap deal that it negotiated in May.
But in a region where the U.S. is stretched thin and short of even semireliable allies, the Obama administration is keeping its public criticism of Turkey muted and trying to move forward.
The Obama administration “is in the worst of all worlds,” Eric Edelman, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, told POLITICO.
“The fundamental problem, I believe, which hasn’t been addressed, is that at this stage, the Turks believe we need them more than they need us. But they need us for a lot of things, too.”
President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will both attend the G-20 meeting in Canada later this week. But U.S. officials were still vague about whether the two will meet on the sidelines, saying no meeting had been firmed up.
Meanwhile, officials suggested that the Obama administration might try to use the quiet visit of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to Washington this week as an opportunity “to try to patch things up,” if possible, between Israel and Turkey, which have had strong defense ties.
Turkey’s highly regarded envoy to Washington, Namik Tan, could be a constructive intermediary for Washington but may have limited room for maneuver given the government he serves. A veteran diplomat who served as Turkey’s ambassador to Israel from 2007 to 2009, Tan is a colleague and friend to many senior officials in Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
In an interview with POLITICO, Tan described being on the phone with Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, late last month to arrange a meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that was supposed to take place in Washington on June 1. A few hours after they set up the meeting, and as Davutoglu was sitting on the tarmac in Brazil waiting for his flight to the United States, Israeli commandos intercepted the Gaza aid flotilla, in an operation in which eight Turks and one Turkish-American were killed.
Davutoglu ended up flying to New York to attend an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting on the violence, while Netanyahu’s trip to Washington was canceled. Turkey’s opposition to the U.N. Iran sanctions resolution, meanwhile, deepened.
But Tan insisted there has been no breach in the U.S.-Turkey relationship in the wake of either the flotilla episode or Turkey’s vote against the Iran sanctions resolution.
“We have excellent relations with all members of the administration,” Tan said. “We are able to talk with them in an extensive, comprehensive manner, in face-to-face meetings and several phone conversations,” he said, citing recent conversations between Davutoglu and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and with National Security Adviser Jim Jones.
Tan said Turkey shares the United States’ concern about the prospect that Iran could get a nuclear weapon. But he said Turkey’s vote against the Iran sanctions resolution will allow Turkey to remain an intermediary with Iran and therefore enable the U.S. and the international community “to keep the door open to” Iran’s returning to the negotiating table.
The U.S. “has indicated publicly and privately that we are very unhappy” with Turkey’s “no” vote on the U.N. Security Council Iran resolution, “but [we] want to move forward on crucial elements of relations,” a U.S. official told POLITICO Monday on condition of anonymity.
Turkish officials said the Obama administration has given them mixed signals on a possible Iran nuclear fuel swap proposal that Ankara and Brazil negotiated last month, under which 1,200 kilograms of Iran’s low-enriched uranium would be sent to Turkey in exchange for nuclear fuel for a Tehran reactor that supplies isotopes to treat Iranian cancer patients.
Though the U.S. formally dismissed the Turkey-Brazil-Iran nuclear deal as insufficient and proceeded with a Security Council resolution sanctioning Iran earlier this month, Obama has said that the resolution does not close the door on diplomacy.
“We don’t doubt Turkey’s sincerity in trying to find a diplomatic way forward and a genuine way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons,” a senior administration official told POLITICO. “And they assert that what they were doing is consistent with our objectives.”
“You will see that we have not rejected the Tehran declaration or denounced it,” the senior official continued. “We have said if Iran wants to transfer 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium to Turkey, that would be good. All we said was that it was not sufficient — it doesn’t deal with the problem and does not obviate the need for sanctions.”
“They are sending mixed signals,” said Edelman, a former undersecretary of defense for policy. “It is very unhelpful, and it makes it very difficult for the Turks to really calibrate how to handle this.”
“My bet is, at the end of the day, … the administration argues that Turkey is still on the Security Council [and] we still need them,” Edelman continued. “The Turks believe that they are being encouraged [by the Obama administration] to continue negotiations” with the Iranians.
Edelman suggested that the Obama administration might clarify — not publicly but in private — a few points with Turkey, namely: “They need us for a lot of things, too,” he said. “Make clear to them privately that there will be a cost, and some things they want from us might not be forthcoming. There are degrees of how much we have to support them on Cyprus, how much to support their candidacy for the [European Union]. We are helping them with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] and giving them lots of intelligence. Exactly how much effort we have to put into that is all a question of degree.”
U.S. officials firmly denied Turkish conspiracy theories that the U.S. or Israel was behind a seasonal flare-up of PKK violence on the Turkey-Iraq border over the weekend, in which several Turkish soldiers were killed.
“The U.S. has been extraordinarily responsive and supportive on the latest round of PKK attacks,” a U.S. official said. “The U.S. does not take seriously veiled accusations and conspiracy theories in the media.”

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