Erdoğan’s Victory, With Steven A. Cook

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is Erdoğan's victory. 

 

With me to discuss what the reelection of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as president of Turkey means for U.S.-Turkish relations and the future of NATO is Steven A. Cook. Steven is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council. He has written extensively on the Middle East. He is the author of False Dawn: Protest Democracy and Violence in the New Middle East, and a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine. His most recent piece is titled, "Why Turkey Experts Got the Election All Wrong." Steven, thanks for joining me.

 

COOK:
Pleasure to be back with you, Jim.

 

LINDSAY:
Always good to have you, Steven. Now for months, I have been reading that President Erdoğan two decade dominance of Turkish politics was about to end. The economy is in the worst shape in twenty years. Employment is hitting 10 percent. Inflation is topping 70 percent. Many Turks are fearful that he is dismantling Turkey's democracy. And by all accounts, Erdoğan's government mishandled the response to the horrific earthquake that hit southeastern Turkey in February and left tens of thousands of Turks dead, many of who died because Erdoğan's government turned a blind eye to shoddy construction practices. Yet, Erdoğan dominated the first round of voting, and then achieved an outright majority in the second round. What happened?

 

COOK:
I was hearing these things as well. I think that there was a problem, which was the reason for writing the piece, there was a problem in the analysis ahead of the election. Certainly, everything that you enumerated were problems, the economy, the response to the earthquake, deepening authoritarianism in the country.

 

LINDSAY:
Those are not things that scream reelection.

 

COOK:
They definitely are not things that scream reelection. But nevertheless, as you point out, Erdoğan has prevailed. And I think that there's a number of reasons for that. First, in the run up to the elections, the Justice and Development Party, President Erdoğan's party, and their agents buried within the bureaucracy were able to essentially clear the field for President Erdoğan. His most potent potential adversary, the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was banned from politics. His case is on appeal, but he on the flimsiest of charges of insulting the justices of the supreme election council during the 2019 local elections has now been banned from politics and is facing a prison term. They used the state tax authority to go after opponents. The large majority of the media is in the hands of Erdoğan friendly media conglomerates, just an entire effort to ensure Erdoğan's victory.

 

And then of course on the day of, certainly in the first round, there were many, many challenges to ballots in opposition strongholds. And there remains a question whether those ballots were ever really counted. Nevertheless, we went to a second round. And despite all of the challenges, all of the challenges, Erdoğan still had a message about traditional values, about culture, about national identity that resonated with at least half of the population.

 

LINDSAY:
So walk me through that, Steven. What is the argument that Erdoğan is making to his supporters or people on the fence to bring them into the ballot booth to vote for him?

 

COOK:
He is saying that his opponents, and we can talk a lot about the opposition and their deficits, but let's talk about Erdoğan because I think that one of the secrets to Erdoğan's longevity and the AKP's longevity, even though the AKP didn't do as well, they and their partners now continue to enjoy parliamentary majority, but relatively speaking, is that message that they have been sending to the Turkish public for twenty years now about prosperity, about power, about piety, those things people have actually felt those things. Yes, Turkey is in a terrible economic situation. But Erdoğan has effectively turned that into a nationalist issue, suggesting that there are outside forces, that there's this interest rate lobby that is trying to bring Turkey to its knees.

 

But overall, up until the last five years, Turks have felt more prosperous. Turkey has from their perspective... more powerful. The religious values that the AKP has allowed people to express in public in ways that were never possible before the AKP's time in power is consistent with people's values. And he said, "I'm going to protect those things for you. I'm going to protect your traditional values. I'm going to protect you from all of those outside external forces, in particular the United States that wants to bring Turkey to its knees and that my opponents won't do those things. My opponents are weak. They are agents of the United States. They're agents of the Europeans. They are gay." That was part of his closing arguments was attacks on the LGBTQ community and connecting Kemal Kilicdaroglu, his opponent, the opposition leader, to the LGBT community worldwide.

 

LINDSAY:
Sounds like Erdoğan ran a campaign that at least in some part was a culture war.

 

COOK:
Absolutely. He has since at least 2008, 2009, has ruled based on division. And this is a formula that's worked and it worked well in this election. And his opponent is also from a minority group. He's an Alawi.

 

LINDSAY:
Explain what that means.

 

COOK:
Well, we can go into a long discussion of it.

 

LINDSAY:
Give me the ten second version.

 

COOK:
The ten second version is that he's not a Sunni Muslim, or Sunni Muslims don't necessarily consider Alawis to be good Muslims. So in any event, this was, yes, a culture war. And so all of the emphasis on the economic problems and the slow response to the earthquake, or the corruption that led to shoddy construction, which is not really a new problem in Turkey. I remind people of the 1999 Izmit earthquake, which killed thousands of people as well, which was four years before AKP came to power and two years before it even existed. Remember the book by Thomas Frank, What's the Matter With Kansas?, in which he asked, "Why do people vote against their economic interests?" Because culture and identity issues. It's a similar kind of dynamic.

 

LINDSAY:
Okay. So let's talk about the losing side, the losing candidate. Obviously, they did not get to run their preferred candidate because as you mentioned, he went to jail. What mistakes did that candidate make besides having the wrong religious faith for at least some people in Turkey?

 

COOK:
Well, I think the cardinal error that Kemal Kilicdaroglu made, which was essentially foisting himself on the opposition coalition, and the polls were wrong, but I think on one thing that they were right on, which is that he was the weakest of all of the potential opposition candidates. But nevertheless, he believed it was his turn to run.

 

LINDSAY:
So there were several parties who sort of came together in a coalition to back one candidate.

 

COOK:
A six party coalition, and Kemal Kilicdaroglu is the leader of the Republican People's Party, which is the main opposition party, the party Ataturk's party, the founder of modern Turkey. And of the major figures in what's called The Table of Six, he polled least well against Erdoğan.

 

LINDSAY:
But he had the biggest party.

 

COOK:
But he had the biggest party and he felt that it was his turn to run. In fact, in early March there was a problem in the coalition. One of the major parties in the coalition called the Good Party or the İyi Party in Turkish, the leader of that party, a woman named Meral Akşener, bolted from the coalition because she felt that Kilicdaroglu was a weak candidate. I think the other big problem was that if they did believe that there was a possibility that the Justice and Development Party was going to play games with the ballot boxes, and I mentioned before there's a question about these challenged ballots and whether they were actually counted. You would think that they would have eyes on every single ballot box, but they lost track of 20,000 ballot boxes. And no one's ever going to know whether those ballots were actually counted.

 

In terms of messaging, they talked about returning Turkey to a democratic system and the economy. But Erdoğan can turn around and say, "Hey, I'm the real democrat here. Pious women who wear hijab now have the freedom to wear it wherever they want. I've expanded participation in Turkish politics. We have elections on time. They're free and fair." Whereas under the kind of traditional elite in Turkey, pious women didn't really enjoy the right to go anywhere that they wanted. Maybe they had the right formally, but they didn't feel like they could. Turkey was marked by authoritarian politics. If you talked to a supporter of Erdoğan and the AKP and you say, "There's been a dissent into authoritarianism in Turkey after kind of promising democratization early in the AKP's time in office," they'll look at you like you're crazy, say, "What are you talking about? We had 88 percent turnout in the first round of the election. Erdoğan has done all of these things that have made us freer." And his constituency in ways do feel freer than they did prior to his coming to power.

 

LINDSAY:
Let's move the conversation on and talk about what happens now that Erdoğan is getting another five year term. Is Turkey headed toward autocracy as many of his critics argue?

 

COOK:
I think it's a distinct possibility. There's been this debate that I've been involved in. How do we talk about Turkey? Is it a liberal democracy? Is it competitive authoritarianism? It's certainly competitive in comparison to Egypt, one of my other favorite countries in the world.

 

LINDSAY:
Your most favorite country.

 

COOK:
Besides my own. But if the outcome continues to be the same, it's a distinction without much of a difference. And I wonder, it is genuine that Turks feel that their votes have to matter and they're infused with meaning. But if they vote and the contest these elections, and they come out in these large numbers and they can't get over the top, I wonder if that is going to depoliticize society. And I wonder now that Erdoğan has won another five year term, what he is going to do to ensure that the changes that he and the AKP have wrought over twenty years can be protected from his opponents. And that's going to come in the form of a new constitution. He's promised that finally he's going to write a new constitution.

 

This has been on his agenda since 2007, wasn't able to do it. Had to settle for constitutional amendments in 2017. But in the run-up to the election, he's been saying, "I'm going to write a new constitution." And I think that constitution, if he gets it done, is going to lock in those changes that will really reflect his world view, his sensibilities, the AKP values that may in fact seal the deal where Turkey can no longer be considered anything other than an authoritarian political system.

 

LINDSAY:
What about his decisions on the economic front? The markets don't think very much of his economic policies, which are unorthodox, to say the least. I will note that the value of the Turkish lira has fallen about 20 percent against a dollar over the last year. That means imports are much more expensive, means more inflation. Is Erdoğan going to be able to turn around the economy?

 

COOK:
That's a good question. He really does pursue unorthodox economic policy. In the face of inflation, you're supposed to raise interest rates. In fact, he has demanded that the Central Bank, which is supposed to be independent, pursue a low interest rate policy.

 

LINDSAY:
This is opposite what the Federal Reserve has done here in the United States.

 

COOK:
Exactly opposite.

 

LINDSAY:
Or the Central Bank in England or Germany.

 

COOK:
All of the opposite of all those things, and inflation is running very, very high. Official rate of inflation is 43 percent, but it's at probably double that if not more. It strikes me there's been some speculation that he will change. And he has the capacity to change. But it strikes me that if he does do that, it won't be very soon. He has been running against the so-called interest rate lobby for the better part of the last decade, and he's not likely to surrender to the interest rate lobby very, very soon. There are rumors that the foreign minister of finance, a guy named Mehmet Simsek, who has a Wall Street background, will come back into the government and that will give confidence in the markets.

 

But unless they actually take some real action to stem the problem with the lira, I think Turks are going to continue to struggle with high inflation. I think what Erdoğan is thinking is that with his rapprochement, with Gulf countries, he can-

 

LINDSAY:
Persian Gulf countries.

 

COOK:
Persian Gulf countries, or for our friends in the western side of the Gulf, the Arabian Gulf countries that their sizable sovereign wealth funds will invest in Turkey as they have been doing, that he can have credit swaps with the Emirates and the Chinese that will keep Turkey afloat. In fact, President Erdoğan right before the end of the campaign said he would go to the Gulf to thank them for depositing money in the Central Bank, and that this will keep Turkey afloat while they pursue an export led growth strategy that will solve Turkey's problems. As you said, the lira is worth ... What was the figure? 10 percent less.

 

LINDSAY:
It's dropped by 20 percent this year.

 

COOK:
So imports are more expensive, but Turkey's exports will be more competitive around the world.

 

LINDSAY:
But you have to make high quality products that people want to buy.

 

COOK:
I'm just telling you what might be the strategy is, an export led growth strategy, rather than applying pain, more pain, on his core constituency, which is that broader middle class of Turks that emerged in the middle part of his time in office.

 

LINDSAY:
That strategy can work if you're outsiders, in this case, the Saudis and the Emirates can continue to write big checks. But they may stop at some point, presumably.

 

COOK:
This is one of the problems. The caprice of authoritarian leaders, things may change where they decide not to. My sense is that the Gulf leaders believe that investment in Turkey is a way for them to get leverage over Erdoğan that they were unable to get by, for example, funding Khalifa Haftar in Libya or others to oppose the-

 

LINDSAY:
So why would they want leverage over Erdoğan?

 

COOK:
They are concerned about the exercise of Turkish power in the region. Broadly speaking, Erdoğan sees himself as a leader of the Muslim world, and I think Saudis and Egyptians have something to say about that. And they are concerned that the Justice and Development Party is essentially the Muslim Brotherhood. Now I don't think that's entirely accurate. But Erdoğan is an Islamist. And these countries, their leaders are both.

 

LINDSAY:
Explain what you mean by Islamist.

 

COOK:
Well, Turkish Islamism is different from Islamism that you find in the Arab world. But essentially, it's a style of politics in which religion plays this prominent role, and it is a threat to the monarchies of-

 

LINDSAY:
So why would the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, to pick one person out of the bunch, be threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood or an Islamist approach to politics?

 

COOK:
Because these are ideas that Islamists espouse that are potentially attractive to broad numbers of people in these countries. And they'd like to keep these ideas out because they're fundamentally anti-system messages.

 

LINDSAY:
And anti-monarchal, anti-monarchical, I should say.

 

COOK:
Obviously, in the case of in the Gulf countries, anti-monarchical because that's the system, so that's the way in which they have sought to gain some leverage of Erdoğan. And to be honest with you, unlike for example Egypt, Turkey has assets that are worth buying, that Turkish defense contractors produce good defense articles. Turkey is a manufacturing center for Europe. Any Ford automobile that's sold in Europe has been manufactured in Turkey, so it's a real economy. And so the idea of export led growth isn't crazy, and the idea that there will be investment isn't crazy, but the question is whether these Gulf countries want to continue to invest.

 

LINDSAY:
Okay. Let's talk about foreign policy, more about foreign policy. I will note that President Joe Biden, who has positioned himself as championing democracy around the world tweeted his congratulations to Erdoğan after Erdoğan's victory. What do you make of that?

 

COOK:
You always ask me these questions: if you were sitting next to the president, what would you advise the president to do? And if I had been sitting next to the president when he took to Twitter to congratulate President Erdoğan, I'd say, "Mr. President, maybe you want to put down your phone, wait a little while longer."

 

LINDSAY:
Why is that? Everyone else, as best I can tell-

 

COOK:
Hamas and lots of others were-

 

LINDSAY:
President Macron of France, Vladimir Putin also tweeted.

 

COOK:
President Biden has made a big deal, at least rhetorically about values in American foreign policy. Now I've written that I thought that this was a mistake, that no American president can not talk about American values, but that a values forward foreign policy as the administration announced early on was going to lead to trouble and lead to accusations for hypocrisy, and here's Erdoğan who is ... I mean, Turkey's a repressive state. It gets a pass because it's a NATO ally, but it has tens of thousands of political prisoners. It represses its Kurdish population. Its opposition and its leadership has promised to send back Syrian refugees against their will into a war zone, into a country that's led by a war criminal. And here was the president congratulating Erdoğan and saying he looked forward to working together. Again, it didn't look quite right.

 

But again, Turkey is a NATO ally. It's an important one. It's playing a role in the Ukraine conflict that doesn't necessarily sit well with its NATO allies, but by carving out this kind of gray area where it supports Ukraine sovereignty and has said all the right things, and early on sold Ukraine important military equipment, including drones, but has also maintained ties with Russia and helped Russia skirt sanctions and a variety of other things. But it has facilitated a dialogue between President Erdoğan and President Putin that has led to, for example, the Black Sea Grain Deal, which if you're worried about the stability of countries around the region, getting grain out of the Black Sea is very, very important to Egypt, the largest importer of wheat in the world. I don't know what Egypt would do without the Black Sea Grain Deal. There's good and there's bad, but it did seem odd that the president was so quick to congratulate Erdoğan given his emphasis on values and his statements that the United States really does need to stand for something in the world.

 

LINDSAY:
Isn't the answer to that question the point you just made, that Erdoğan has reasonably good ties with Vladimir Putin? I said a moment ago, Putin tweeted his congratulations. I don't believe he tweeted. He send his congratulations to Erdoğan, calling him his dear friend. Does Erdoğan, given his economic situation, have an incentive to want to provide something to President Putin?

 

COOK:
It's certainly the case that the Turks have an expertise in evading sanctions. They help the Iranians evade sanctions. And Putin actually has money. And also, Turkish business has moved into Russia where Western companies have moved out, and so there is a mutually beneficial relationship here. And of course, Turkey buys gas and oil from the Russians, which is perfectly legal.

 

LINDSAY:
At a discount.

 

COOK:
At a discount, right. So this is a relationship that is going to continue regardless of what's happening in Ukraine and regardless of what U.S. and NATO wishes are. So again, it seemed unseemly, but American foreign policy is often in that place that is strategically tenable, but morally questionable.

 

LINDSAY:
We'll have a whole nother podcast on that. I don't want to go down that avenue. I want to stay focused on what's happening with Turkey. So my sense is then that you see Erdoğan continuing to play both sides of the fence. Does he have any red lines, Steven?

 

COOK:
Well, Erdoğan's red lines with regard to Russia I think are the red lines that everybody has, which is the brandishing of nuclear weapons and the use of them. I think that would very much put Turkey firmly, firmly in the camp of where its NATO allies are. But until that happens, I think the Turks will continue to play this role for good and bad with Ukraine and with Russia. Other than that, again, there's going to be a lot of continuity in the Turkish approach to the world. Erdoğan sees Turkey as a rising power. Throughout his tenure, he's said that the "world is bigger than five," meaning it's bigger than the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. He sees Turkey as a power in the Mediterranean, in the Middle East, in the Muslim world, in Europe, and in Central Asia. And as a result, he's going to pursue an independent foreign policy as he has been doing, and doesn't see a reason, because he was reelected, to change course.

 

LINDSAY:
Okay. So Erdoğan wants to pursue this independent Turkish foreign policy. But Turkey is also a member of NATO, as you've noted. Erdoğan surprised some people I think earlier this year when he agreed to allow Finland to join NATO. But he has remained opposed to allowing Sweden to join NATO. That raises a couple of questions, maybe the first one is: Why did Finland get in, but not Sweden?

 

COOK:
Well, of those two, Sweden was the most problematic. Sweden has become the home for Kurdish activists and followers of Fethullah Gülen, who Erdoğan and the Turkish establishment blames for the failed coup in 2016. Fethullah Gülen is a cleric. He's actually a permanent resident of the United States. But his followers who are journalists and activists, many of them have gone to Stockholm to continue their activities. And Erdoğan has demanded that Sweden change its laws so that they can extradite Kurdish activists and Gülenists to Turkey. And Sweden has changed its laws. In a number of days, in early June, those changes are supposed to go into effect. But I think that there's a view that Erdoğan is going to move the goal posts, as they say. And in the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius, there's going to be some Turkey related Sweden drama because Erdoğan wants to prove to his NATO partners that he is not to be ... They shouldn't assume that he's just going to allow Sweden to come in without getting something in return.

 

That's going to be a negotiation not between Turkey and Sweden. Sweden says it's going to do all the right things. The Turks will probably say, "But they need to do more," but it's really about negotiating between the United States and Turkey over Turkey's desire for new F-16s and perhaps being let back into the F-35 program.

 

LINDSAY:
So just to be clear there when we talk about Kurds and talk about Gülenists, they're separate groups, they're not identical groups, just to be clear.

 

COOK:
Yes. Separate groups.

 

LINDSAY:
So let's talk about what appears to be the haggling that is about to take place in the bazaar. You have been in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. It's one of the world's great wonders, wonderful place to be. So the Turks have some experience with negotiating. You've mentioned that on the table for price of admission for Sweden and NATO is F-16s and maybe the F-35 program. Explain to me how those come to be joined together.

 

COOK:
United States and its NATO allies very much want Sweden to be within the alliance.

 

LINDSAY:
That part I get. That part, I understand.

 

COOK:
Erdoğan has his reservations about Sweden. He also wants F-16s and he wants to be back into the F-35 program. He was expelled from the F-35 program for Turkey's purchase of Russia's air defense system that was designed specifically to shoot down NATO aircraft.

 

LINDSAY:
Because U.S. officials were worried that the Turks were then becoming a conveyor of information to Russians-

 

COOK:
About F-35s.

 

LINDSAY:
About how to-

 

COOK:
Right, how to shoot down our fifth generation warplane via their operation of the S-400 because it requires Russian technicians to help with software upgrades and so on and so forth.

 

LINDSAY:
I get that. Where do the F-16s come in?

 

COOK:
Turkey, having not gotten the F-35s, being thrown out of the F-35 program, requested F-16s. It's relying on right now F-16s that are out of date and need an upgrade. And they feel a gap. for the first time in a long time, the Greeks have air superiority over the Turks in the Aegean.

 

LINDSAY:
You'll have to explain why that's relevant, just quickly.

 

COOK:
Well, just there are disputes over territory and territorial waters in the Aegean, which is the place where Greece and Turkey meet.

 

LINDSAY:
Long-standing, historical rivalries and countries.

 

COOK:
Exactly. And up until the earthquake, there had been almost daily incursions on the part of Turks over Greek territory, and dog fights, not actual shooting, but dog fights over the Aegean between the Greek and Turkish air forces. So the Turks have requested new F-16s. The Biden administration has expressed its support for this in principle. But the president has reminded the Turks that there is a process to this, meaning that Congress will have its say. Well, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is not inclined to approve F-16s for Turkey. So there is going to be this negotiation where we say the Turks ... In fact, Secretary Blinken has recently said, "Now is time to approve Sweden getting in." And the Turks have yet said anything about it. And the betting is that there will be some sort of quid pro quo in which it's a Sweden for F-16 deal. But that may not be good enough for Senator Robert Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has said that he will not approve F-16s to Turkey unless Turkey promises not to use those F-16s to menace other NATO allies.

 

LINDSAY:
Insert here, Greece.

 

COOK:
Specifically meaning Greece. But this is Menendez dictating the way in which Turkey calculates its interests and its security threats. I'm not sure that's going to sit very well with the folks in Ankara. So I expect there'll be some-

 

LINDSAY:
So the Biden administration is going to be basically playing a two level game. On the one hand, negotiating with the Turks, on the other hand, negotiating with a separate and equal branch of government here in the United States.

 

COOK:
That's exactly right. Something you've written a lot about, Jim, and unlike President Trump, who was willing to run over Congress on issues related to weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, it doesn't strike me that President Biden is willing to use the powers that he has to ignore congressional concerns about a sale to Turkey.

 

LINDSAY:
He did spend six terms in the United States Senate, so I think he's absorbed many of the norms of the Senate. Steven, I want to close with sort of the big picture question, which is: Given what you know of Erdoğan and what his preferences are, what his constraints are, what his ambitions are, how should the United States handle him going forward? Is tough love on order? Should we be conciliatory, some third strategy?

 

COOK:
Once again, if I was sitting next to the president, I would say, "President, if you asked me that question as a basis of this discussion, let's keep in mind that there's a vast reservoir of anti-Americanism in Turkey." So that things like tough love may be turned around against the United States and they undermine the things that we want to achieve. In principle, I'm not opposed to it. I think that only 9 percent of Turks approve of the United States, so it doesn't really cost you that much if you call Erdoğan out on values issues.

 

But of course, there's a major land war in Europe right now, and you do want to do everything possible to keep NATO unified. I think what I would say to the president is exactly what I've been saying for a number of years now, which is that Turkey is a power in its own right, and wants to pursue an independent foreign policy. And so where our interests coincide, those are places that we can exploit and work together with them.

 

LINDSAY:
Where do you see those being?

 

COOK:
Well, I think the Black Sea Grain Deal was one that was very important. It wasn't specific to the conflict, but it provided benefits to the United States beyond that conflict. Food insecurity in Egypt, a country of 110 million people, many of whom are very poor, would be very bad for the Middle East, a place where I think the United States had some significant interest. So that's one of those things. And another example where interests don't align, which is in Syria, we do need to oppose the Turks. We need to be vocal about what they're doing in attacking our allies.

 

LINDSAY:
What exactly are they doing? Sort of ten second version.

 

COOK:
Turkey's air force and its proxies on the ground in Syria are attacking American allies, a Kurdish fighting force called the People's Protection Unit. Those Kurdish fighters have been helpful to the United States in "degrading in defeating ISIS," in the words of President Obama, and keeping ISIS fighters in makeshift jails in northern Syria. The Turks see those guys, those Kurdish fighters, as terrorists, as an extension of a terrorist organization that it has been fighting since the mid-1980s. But this issue of ISIS is extraordinarily important to the United States and the region more broadly. And we have to be, I think when it comes to this issue and them attacking the YPG, I think we need to be much more proactive in getting them to stop doing that.

 

And then there are places where the United States and Turkey have different views on things. But it's not so important we can get out of each other's way. That's perhaps Turkey's views on issues in Africa, whether it's Somalia, or Ethiopia, the Horn, those kinds of things, Turkish activity isn't that critical. We may not like it, but the stakes aren't high enough and what the Turks are doing may not be as damaging as for example in Syria.

 

LINDSAY:
So you're telling me that it's complicated.

 

COOK:
Just to close, a lot of policy makers, a lot of people in Washington kind of look at Turkey and the relationship with rose colored glasses, the mythology about fighting together and dying together in Korea in the 1950s, and standing shoulder to shoulder on NATO's southeastern flank during the Cold War. Those things are true, but this was always a difficult relationship. And I think it's going to continue to be a difficult relationship.

 

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guest has been Steven Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei, senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council. Steven, as always, thanks for joining me.

 

COOK:
Thanks for having me.

 

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And leave us a review, we love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

 

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks go out to Michelle Kurilla. This is Jim Lindsay, thanks for listening.