The following analysis focuses on U.S. election's impact on Turkish-American relations. Independent of who the winner of the 2024 presidential election in the United States is, Turkish-American relations are not likely to witness a radical departure from current dynamics. Problems between Ankara and Washington have become structural in the last decade, mainly due to diverging national security priorities and interests. Developments on two fronts, however, are worth following closely: namely the fate of S-400s Russian missile defense system in Türkiye and U.S. support for Syrian Kurds. If the two NATO partners manage to find creative solutions to these two thorny problems, their trust deficit will significantly narrow.

President Erdoğan attends a bilateral meeting with US President Biden during the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid. (Source: WH)

It should not come as a surprise that American elections are notoriously self-centered affairs. An almost exclusive focus on domestic dynamics makes it harder to discern the logic behind occasionally diverging positions. The 2024 presidential election proved to be no exception despite the two major wars in which Washington is heavily involved. These two wars – Ukraine and Israel’s military campaign on multiple fronts (Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran) – rarely came under scrutiny. To be sure, it is known at a superficial level that Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine by negotiating with Putin, while Harris sees no need for a departure from the current level of strong military support to Kyiv.

It is also well known that the Democratic camp sees Trump as an autocrat who lacks the skills and temperament to be commander in chief. Yet, beyond such superficial recitation of positions, these two wars in the geographic vicinity of Ankara did not receive much attention in the campaign season despite their ferocious death tolls, especially in the case of the tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians of Gaza. And any reference to Türkiye was conspicuous only by its absence. While it is unrealistic to expect any discussion of Turkish-American relations at the presidential level, Ankara also appears to have lost its relevance in the news coverage of major American media outlets such as the Washington Post or the New York Times.

None of these dynamics means it is impossible to predict how a new White House will approach Erdoğan’s Türkiye. Under a Trump White House, a more transactional, opportunistic, and mercurial Turkish-American relationship is once again likely to emerge – in ways similar to the ups and downs of the first Trump presidency between 2016 and 2020. President Erdoğan probably sees Trump in much more favorable terms as a fellow strongman who will take his phone calls and listen to his views as he did during his previous term. By now, it should be obvious that open lines of communication with the White House will not change Erdoğan’s bigger problem: the poor reputation of Ankara in Congress and in the American national security bureaucracy combined with intractable problems such as the S-400 missile defense system, which Türkiye purchased during Trump’s first term. A reset at the presidential level is nevertheless likely to create false expectations, especially in Ankara, only to generate more frustration once it becomes obvious that well-established patterns at the policy levels will not change in Washington. The previous Trump-Erdoğan dynamics, with their abundance of miscommunication masquerading as camaraderie, should serve as a historical guide for those expecting miracles of a radical departure from current dynamics.

While Trump may create such erroneous hopes, a potential Harris administration will chart a more predictable, distant, and seemingly more principled course with Ankara based on realistic assumptions and lowered expectations. A reset at the presidential level is likely to be elusive since Kamala Harris is likely to be in continuity with Biden’s aloofness towards Ankara and Erdoğan. One should not dismiss, however, the possibility of positive change in a transactional framework. A more positive agenda will require significant course correction on the Türkiye’s part, with some modification in Ankara’s possession of S-400 Russian missile defense systems, Erdoğan’s rhetorical support for Hamas, and overall antagonistic Turkish relations with Greece despite recent modest improvements. Absent such progress, we should be ready to expect more of the same in Turkish-American relations under a Harris administration.

The difference between a Harris and Trump administration will be noticeable, however, at one critical level. Compared to a Trump administration, Kamala Harris is likely to surround herself with advisors with much stronger experience and familiarity with Ankara. Philip H. Gordon, her current national security advisor, is such a policymaker. Gordon, who wrote a book with this author on Turkish-American relations more than 15 years ago, is a well-respected and experienced hand who served as Assistant Secretary for European Affairs at the State Department and as Senior Coordinator for the Middle East during the Obama years. These experienced names will have well-established and jaded views about Erdoğan. As a result, they will be much harder to spin compared to inexperienced and more ideologically inclined potential policymakers, such as Kash Patel and Ric Grenell, who will work with former President Trump.

Issues to Watch

Under either president, two factors may prove of decisive importance in shaping dynamics in the near term. The first and more likely one will be an American decision to withdraw troops from Iraq. Such a decision has been in development for some time, and current dynamics related to Iran and Israel could render it more difficult. In case of an American withdrawal from Iraq, it will be almost impossible for the Pentagon to maintain a presence in Northern Syria. The Pentagon has some 900 special forces supporting a Syrian Kurdish entity in the effort to contain the risk of ISIS resurgence. Ankara considers this Kurdish group, the PYD, as the Syrian wing of the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist organization by both Türkiye and the United States. Washington maintains that the PYD has never attacked Türkiye and is embedded in the larger entity of Syrian Democratic Forces – an organization created to circumvent Türkiye’s accusations of American support for terrorism.

Most American policymakers have mixed feelings about US-Kurdish cooperation in Syria, mainly because deep down, they know and understand the organic nature of PKK-PYD relations. They are also acutely aware that the above-mentioned Turkish perception of American cooperation with Kurdish terrorism is at the heart of Ankara’s trust deficit with Washington. Any policy change on that front – such as an American decision to fully withdraw forces from Syria – will be of consequential importance in improving Turkish-American relations.

An American exit from Syria could potentially have tragic consequences for Pentagon’s Kurdish allies. But if well-negotiated and skillfully leveraged by Washington, this American exit could also help a newly burgeoning Kurdish opening in Türkiye. Given Erdoğan’s Machiavellian track record in dealing with the Kurdish issue at home, there should be well-deserved skepticism about this new opening. It will probably be a self-serving affair to register Kurdish political support to prolong his term limit under the new presidential system established in 2017. Yet, from a Turkish perspective, it is hard to argue against the fact that an American exit from Syria will remove the most important irritant in bilateral ties. After all, Ankara would love to have the upper hand in charting any new course with Kurds. And if there is anything that creates more alarm for Ankara’s conspiratorial strategic culture than Kurdish nationalism itself, it is Kurdish nationalism supported by the United States.

The second factor that could significantly improve bilateral relations will be the fate of the Russian missile system that Ankara purchased from Russia in 2019. Ankara is currently under CAATSA (Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) sanctions and has been ejected from the F-35 program because of its ownership of the S-400s. Today, a relatively new American proposal to transfer this Russian system to the US-controlled sector of the Incirlik base near Adana appears to be on the table. It remains to be seen whether Ankara will accept this offer. Transactional dynamics will certainly be at play – such as maximalist Turkish demands for a return to the F-35 program not only as a purchaser but also as a partial producer in the production chain, as was the case originally. Of course, the even more challenging part for Ankara, in case it decides to go along with the American offer, will be the Russian reaction. Moscow was quick to remind Ankara that the purchase of the Russian missile defense system includes an end-user certificate that prohibits third-party engagements without Russia’s consent.

Conclusion

No matter who becomes new resident in the Oval Office, the structural problems in Turkish-American relations are likely to endure. A shared existential threat perception is the most important ingredient of any happy geostrategic marriage. The demise of the Soviet Union, in that sense, changed the nature and raison d’etre of the Turkish-American partnership. America’s Global War On Terrorism (GWOT) could have provided some sense of a common strategic vision for the two NATO partners, as it briefly did in Afghanistan. Yet, Washington embarked on a twenty-year misadventure in the Middle East after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and this journey deeply changed its relations with Ankara. In Iraq, the two countries managed to live with their differences. But the tenuous relationship took a turn for the worst during the Syrian civil war, when Washington began supporting Kurdish forces against ISIS. And bilateral ties reached a fatal turning point when Ankara threw its lot with Jihadist groups in the country on the grounds that they were fighting Ankara’s two enemies: the Assad regime and Kurdish separatists.

Time will show whether Ukraine will provide a cure to fraying Turkish-American relations. The recent shift from the Middle East to Eastern Europe in the center of gravity of Turkish-American relations, may bring back some positive dynamics. Türkiye’s geostrategic relevance in the Black Sea region, its control over the straits, and its procurement of much-needed drones to Ukraine, particularly during the early phase of the Russian invasion, is not lost on American policymakers who were pleasantly surprised by Ankara taking risks with Moscow. But President Erdoğan almost never fails to disappoint and his decision to leverage Sweden’s NATO membership for the sale of F-16s to Ankara was a case in point.

Today, on the eve of a new era in American politics, one thing is abundantly clear: There is no going back to the good old days of the Cold War. And those who long with nostalgia for these days should remember the 1974-1978 American arms embargo because of Cyprus. This alliance was never short of ups and downs. And neither with Trump nor Harris, the near future will prove no exception. Embracing diminished expectations about Turkish-American relations, instead of yearning for a golden age that never existed, seems like sage advice for the foreseeable future.
 
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Dr. Ömer Taşpınar is a professor of national security at National War College and Johns Hopkins, and an adjunct faculty member at SAIS, JHU. His research interests include political economy, Europe, the Middle East, and Turkey.

IstanPol thanks Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Turkey Office for their contribution to this project. The views stated in this paper belong to the author and need not agree, partly or entirely, with the institutional views of IstanPol or Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.