Bill Clinton, the then-US president, is remembered for the famous photograph in which he is holding and hugging a Turkish baby in the earthquake's aftermath.
Forty-five years after Turkish President Celal Bayar's address to a joint session of the US Congress in 1954, Bill Clinton addressed the Turkish Parliament during his visit at the time of the earthquake.
At the same time, he, his wife, Hillary Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea, posed for photographers in Turkey's historic cities. These photos were meant to attract the attention of the world to Turkey's historic beauty and thereby help the country to entice tourists during the difficult period following the earthquake's devastation.
Almost nine years after that visit, Hillary Clinton, in her capacity as the US secretary of state under President Barack Obama's administration, is scheduled to come to Ankara on Saturday, as part of her tour of the Middle East.
Hillary Clinton's visit to Ankara will mark the first official contact of the Turkish leadership with the Obama administration, which took office on Jan. 20.
The Hürriyet daily reported yesterday that Hillary Clinton will appear on local NTV's popular program "Haydi Gel Bizimle Ol" (Come and Join Us), hosted by four women from various professions. Surely her expected appearance on this program is aimed at winning the hearts and minds of leading Turkish citizens who have become anti-American due to the US's war in neighboring Iraq.
Under the eight-year-long President George W. Bush administration, relations between the two allies, Turkey and the US, had deeply soured and confidence was lost towards one another.
The Turkish Parliament's rejection of a motion that prevented the US from using Turkish soil as a launching point for a second front in its invasion of Iraq in March 2003 marked the beginning of tense relations between the two allies. Then-US President Bush's decision in November 2007 to supply Turkey with real-time intelligence in Ankara's pursuit of the targets of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq has played a role, to a certain extent, in normalizing relations.
But Turkey's rapprochement with countries like Iran, which is under scrutiny for its nuclear program, and its intense dialogue with Hamas, a militant Palestinian organization that is included in the lists of the terrorist organizations of both the US and the European Union, have been among the points of conflict between the two NATO allies.
At the same time there are many topics such as Russia's hegemonic policy (over Georgia in particular), Turkey's refusal to contribute combat troops to Afghanistan and Turkey becoming an energy transit line to lessen Russian influence in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia that require cooperation between the two nations.
The US's support for Turkey's EU membership, meanwhile, began during Bill Clinton's administration.
Hillary Clinton, who reaffirmed the US's strong support for Israel during her visit this week as part of her Middle East tour, can also be read as a message to Ankara that it has to normalize its relations with Tel Aviv. This is particularly important since the relations between Turkey and Israel seriously soured after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's harsh and strongly worded criticism of Israel regarding its Gaza assault early this year, which caused the deaths of over 1,000 people.
Hillary's overall message to the Turkish leadership and the Turkish response to her will help reshape Turkish-US relations. But most likely Ankara will focus on the immediate threat of allegations of the genocide of Armenians under the Ottoman Turks during the events of 1915.
Turkish leadership is expected to intensely lobby Hillary Clinton to ensure that President Obama will refrain from using the term genocide to describe the 1915 events during his April 24 speech. Ankara is also expected to convince US Secretary of State Clinton to prevent the US Congress from adopting a resolution that would label Turkey as a country that has committed genocide, a crime that Turkey denies.
According to US sources in Ankara, Hillary Clinton can be expected to be Turkey's best advocate for preventing the genocide resolution. In return, Ankara will be a trustworthy ally for the US in promoting Washington's interests in the region, provided that they fall in line with the Turkish interests.
