The common interpretation of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan’s agenda–curtailing individual freedoms and democratic institutions at home, an anti-Israel world view, the (failed) dalliance with the Iran-Hezbollah bloc, overt support for the Muslim Brotherhood–is that by rejecting the secular traditions of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk that led to the modern Turkish nation, he is internally refashioning Turkey as an Islamist and not-so democratic state. Secondly, Erdogan envisions the new Turkey as an ethnic and religious nexus of the greater Muslim world. His so-called neo-Ottomanism would make Turkey the Middle East concierge between the West and Islam. By now few in the West–except the present U.S. administration–are taken in by Erdogan’s blowhard evocations of everything from the battle of Manzikert to the 16th-century Ottoman Islamization of the Balkans.
Even European Union grandees long ago sized up Erdogan’s agendas and concluded that if Turkey once had some potential for EU membership, it most certainly does not any longer under the forces that brought Erdogan to power. For all practical purposes, Erdogan’s idea of an Ottoman and Islamist Turkey is incompatible with its traditional NATO membership; indeed, in the post-Cold War it is difficult to envision any crisis scenario–even the present Syrian mess–in which Erdogan could be a muscular and reliable U.S. ally. His present cachet is predicated on Barack Obama’s romance with supposedly authentic and grass roots Middle East Islamists of the Mohamed Morsi and Hamas sorts. Because Obama is intrigued by Erdogan’s boutique anti-Western and anti-Israeli rants, the latter’s hostilities have not yet earned the snubs they deserve. The post-Obama State Department will probably have to reset with Turkey or Turkey with us, if any semblance of the old relationship is to survive.
Paradoxically, common skepticism about Erdogan is creating a strategic partnership in the Eastern Mediterranean between Greece, Cyprus, Israel, and some Balkan states that, by any historical or cultural ties, should be our more natural allies than an Islamist Turkey, much less looking to Russia for guidance. In sum, ossified institutions like NATO and the special American relationship have not caught up with Mr. Erdogan. But it is only a matter of time.
