Source: Rand
By Stephen J. Flanagan, F. Stephen Larrabee, Anika Binnendijk, Katherine Costello, Shira Efron, James Hoobler, Magdalena Kirchner, Jeffrey Martini, Alireza Nader, Peter A. Wilson
Published in 2020
The partnership between the United States and Turkey has become strained in recent years because U.S. and Turkish interests and assessments of various challenges are not as aligned as they once were, and significant disagreements have emerged on policies to address several of these challenges. Differences over dealing with Syria and the Kurdish question, tensions concerning Turkey’s relations with its neighbors, an escalating terrorism threat, and U.S. concerns about the authoritarian drift in Turkish politics under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have combined to constrain cooperation and under-mine mutual confidence. Compounding tensions are several thorny bilateral problems, including:
•The continued presence in the United States of Fethullah Gülen, a self-exiled leader of a Sufi Islamic movement that Turkish authorities contend is a terrorist organization that masterminded a failed July 2016 military coup d’état
•Ankara’s purchase of Russian-made S-400 air and missile defense systems
•Turkey’s arrests of American and European nationals on questionable terrorism charges
•The U.S. trial of a gold trader accused of orchestrating a large money-laundering scheme designed to circumvent sanctions against Iran in coordination with senior officials in the Turkish government.
Anti-American sentiment in Turkey has deepened, as have doubts in Turkey about the reliability of the U.S. commitment to Turkey’s stability and security—both exacerbated by inflammatory statements by Erdoğan and other Turkish leaders.
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