Our guest columnists were Today's Zaman Editor-in-Chief Bülent Keneş, Yavuz Baydar, Orhan Kemal Cengiz, İhsan Dağı and Lale Sarıibrahimoğlu. It was a great honor and privilege for me to accompany these first-class intellectuals, each of whom is an expert in his/her specific area.
The prestige of Turkey's leading English-language daily Today's Zaman and the quality of its writers enabled us to arrange talks with whatever office we wished to reach. First, Turkish Ambassador to the US Nabi Şensoy received our delegation in his office. The US government showed a high level of interest in our delegation with the support graciously afforded to us from the US Embassy in Ankara. During our program at the State Department, which lasted almost a full day, we had the opportunity to meet with many officials, including deputy secretaries and other high-ranking people. Likewise, we benefited greatly from our talks at the Pentagon, where we spent almost half a day. We attended round table meetings at influential think tanks in the US, including the Brookings Institution, the Center for American Progress and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in which leading experts on Turkey participated. We conversed with advisers in the US Congress. We also visited some nongovernmental organizations that closely monitor and support Turkey's democratic progress. We convened with the leaders of the US Jewish community. We had a chance to meet with leading members of the US-Turkish community at the Rumi Forum. In short, the Today's Zaman's delegation was able to exchange views with diverse groups about how Washington sees Turkey and vice versa.
We decided to hold these meetings "off the record" in order to make them more productive. I think it will be beneficial to share with you the arguments made by Americans and the impressions I got without making explicit references.
As far as I can see, the first things that came to mind when Turkey is mentioned in Washington are normalization with Armenia, possible contributions to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the country's European Union membership and reform process and its stance against Iran.
In several meetings, the participants were skeptical and even reproachful about Turkey's quick move to recognize the controversial election results in Iran.
It was frequently reiterated that despite internal and external obstacles, the Turkish government should be determined to maintain EU reforms and the EU process, and in particular, it should abolish the barriers to freedom of speech in its broadest sense.
While US officials try to portray a rosy picture of Turkey, perhaps with the intention of not offending their Turkish counterparts, sources close to the US government noted that the general impression is that Turkey has not kept its promises to President Barack Obama concerning normalization with Armenia, thereby making things hard for Turkey's friends in Washington.
While Turkey's contributions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are appreciated, Americans do not conceal their expectations of more. For instance, an interesting suggestion was that some air force capability allocated for defense against Greece, which is a NATO ally, could be shifted toward the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a NATO operation, in Afghanistan. Some Americans also noted that due to never-ending internal conflicts, Turkey has not been able to be as constructive as desired in NATO decision-making mechanisms.
Visibly, the area of cooperation that satisfies the US most is Iraq. Until recently, Turkey was deploying considerable numbers of troops near the border with Iraq due to the terrorist acts of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), but today, it is generally viewed as a constructive power. A US official who closely monitors the terrorism issue said that this is one of the best periods with respect to the fight against the PKK.
The popular policy in Washington regarding Turkish-EU relations can be summed up as using open and private channels to pressure Ankara, Brussels and objecting EU capitals to remove the obstacles to the full membership process. In this context, bottlenecks in the Cyprus issue and a slowdown in the reform process are seen as the greatest obstacles to progress. Officials are generally optimistic about the resolution of the Cyprus issue. However, disappointment and confusion can be seen with respect to reforms.
It is frequently indicated that while the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) had taken bold steps both with respect to the Cyprus issue and the reforms during the early years of its government, it currently cannot adopt a similar policy despite the parliamentary majority it commands. Americans do not accept obstacles posed by some powerful political and bureaucratic opposition groups against the EU process as sufficient pretext for the slowdown in the reform process.
With regard to military-civilian relations, which came to the fore in connection with the Ergenekon case and the controversial General Staff document, Washington maintains its cautious and aloof stance. While US officials note that they closely monitor the debates and think that Turkish-US relations will largely be disrupted in the case of a real military coup, they tend to treat this issue as a complicated internal issue in which they should refrain from increasing their involvement. Unless the developments reach a level that vitally damages the internal stability of Turkey and the EU process, it does not seem likely for the US to concentrate on this issue.
That's all I want to say for now about our tour to discover the tendencies and opportunities in Washington.
