Turkish Delight

After charming his way through summits in Britain, France, and the Czech Republic, U.S. President Barack Obama ended his European tour in Turkey, where he needed every last ounce of his charisma (and had to do without the backup of his wife Michelle, who returned to Washington to be with their daughters).

The last eight years have been brutal on the U.S.-Turkey relationship. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 exposed a deep rift between the two countries, with Ankara opposing the war and Turkey’s parliament refusing to pass a motion that would have allowed U.S. troops to use the country as a launching pad for attacking the Saddam regime. Things have been even more dismal on the public opinion front. In a 2007 Pew Research Center public opinion survey, only 9 percent of Turks surveyed held favorable views of the United States, meaning that Turkey was the country with the least favorable view of the United States among the 47 countries and territories surveyed. (If it’s any consolation for the United States, other surveys found that Turks seem to be a grumpy lot, holding generally unfavorable views of many other countries.)

America’s fall from grace was reflected in Turkish popular culture. A 2005 Turkish bestseller, Metal Firtina (Metal Storm), envisioned Turks and Americans engaging in all-out war, the story ending with a nuclear device detonating in Washington. Kurtlar Vadisi — Irak (Valley of the Wolves — Iraq), a crassly anti-American and anti-Semitic 2006 film that became one of Turkey’s best-grossing movies ever, saw a team of Turkish agents battling evil Americans in northern Iraq and a devious doctor (played by Gary Busey) who runs an organ-harvesting operation that relies on Iraqi corpses.

Yet Turkish public opinion might now be turning a corner. Obama’s election and visit seemed to bring out a healthy dose of goodwill and excitement in Turkey. On the day of his arrival, Hurriyet, one of Turkey’s largest newspapers, ran a large headline that said in English: Welcome, Mr. President (though adding in Turkish below the fold, But we have been offended for the last eight years). Two competing Istanbul pastry makers both came up with a flaky phyllo dough dessert called Baracklava. And for the last few weeks, a face that looks strikingly like that of Obama’s has been staring from billboards across the country, part of an ad campaign for a low-interest account at one of Turkey’s largest banks. Meanwhile, in a speech he gave in late March at Princeton University, Ahmet Davutoglu, the chief foreign-policy advisor to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suggested that we might soon witness the dawning of a golden age in U.S.-Turkey relations. Our approach and principles are almost the same, very similar [to the United States’] on issues such as the Middle East, Caucasus, the Balkans, and energy security, he said.

The Obama administration also appears to have realized that a new approach is needed for Turkey, especially in terms of public diplomacy and reconnecting with the Turkish public. During the Bush years, U.S. officials only seemed to show up in times of crisis, their arrival usually creating a sense of dread that only increased tension, rather than easing it. This has already changed. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Turkey last month mostly to just say hello and, as she explained, listen to what Turks had to say. In a radical — and well-received — departure from the way things had been done previously, Clinton appeared on a popular television chat show, Haydi Gel Bizimle Ol (Come and Join Us), similar to the popular American talk show The View. On the program, Clinton opened up to the four hosts about her family life and her challenged sense of fashion.

The contrast between Clinton’s first trip as secretary of state to Turkey and the several frosty visits that her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, made in recent years, was striking.

Following in Clinton’s footsteps, Obama made his own public-outreach effort, holding an Istanbul town-hall meeting with some 100 Turkish university students that was broadcast live on television. The event took place in a cultural center, a 17th-century Ottoman building that was once a cannon factory, and presented the U.S. president as the college professor in chief: pedagogic without being pedantic, using humor when he needed to, and taking advantage of even bad questions to raise the level of the discussion. Touching on everything from climate change to the Kurdish issue, Obama told the students that the image of America that they might have been getting from films or television shows was not the correct one. Sometimes it suggests that America has become selfish or crass and doesn’t care about the world beyond its borders, Obama told the students. I’m here to tell you that’s not the America I know.

We are still a place where anyone who tries can still make it. If that wasn’t true, then someone named Barack Hussein Obama could not become president, the president added.

It’s a different style, but I think it’s effective, town-hall-meeting attendee Berna Ozkale, a 21-year-old senior studying chemical engineering at Istanbul Technical University, told the Christian Science Monitor. I went to an American high school in Istanbul and I have gone to the United States, but that doesn’t mean I was happy with what America was doing and President Bush. … All these students are here because they have hope in the new American president. … I wouldn’t have come if it was George [W.] Bush.

If there was a golden age in U.S.-Turkey relations, it was probably the several-day visit that then U.S. President Bill Clinton made to Turkey in 1999. Clinton is still fondly remembered for visiting an area outside Istanbul that had been hit by a devastating earthquake only a few months before and for delivering a rousing speech in parliament. Pictures of a smiling Clinton are still easy to find in the small shops in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, where the former president’s image is often displayed as shorthand for We like Americans.

It’s likely that Obama pictures will soon be on display in the bazaar. On a visit there during Obama’s first day in Turkey, I spoke with Ismail Aksahin, a kilim rug merchant who has been working the Grand Bazaar since 1992. We are feeling good about Obama. Bush was a bad option for us for eight years. We feel about Obama the way we feel about Clinton.

If you had asked most of us here a year ago if we were ready to embrace America, everybody would have said, ‘No,’ he added, waving his hand dismissively.

Now the wind is blowing in a different direction.