WASHINGTON, DC – Mere days after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s trip to Washington, DC, in November, Steven Cook, Turkey expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, published his annual Thanksgiving article, a piece in Politico titled “Why I’m Sick of Turkey.” Thus began the end of a tumultuous year for Turkey in the United States.
The Washington consensus on Turkey began showing serious fissures in the last two years of Barack Obama’s presidency, especially as differences over how to battle ISIS in Syria put Washington and Ankara at odds over an issue that received widespread public attention. Added to American reactions to Turkey’s crackdown on the Gezi Park protesters and its press, its continuing hostility toward Armenia, Cyprus, Greece and Israel (and as a result the Armenian, Hellenic, and pro-Israel lobbies), and the aftermath of the failed Turkish coup in 2016, Turkey quickly lost its “golden child” status. The change in perceptions about Turkey were perhaps best captured in President Obama’s noted interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.” Goldberg noted the early faith President Obama had in Recep Tayyip Erdogan, only to consider “him a failure and an authoritarian, one who refuses to use his enormous army to bring stability to Syria” by the end of his presidency.
Conscience of a Hellene 