Trump Is the First President To Get Turkey Right

The crisis between Turkey and the U.S. is as big it gets. Or, maybe it has not even reached its tipping point – yet. The U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are both "explosive personalities" to put it mildly, and here they are: at loggerheads. 

How do the Washington, DC pundits assess the situation? Steven A. Cook, Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, offers a perspective. 

First of all, Cook was always aiming to offer a very objective view; and he is definitely not one of the Washington foreign policy think-tankers advocating tougher stances against Turkey. And he is definitely neither Republican leaning, nor a pro-Trump analyst. So when he argues that Trump is "getting Turkey right", it is quite a striking statement. 

Cook argues as follows: 

The sharp deterioration of relations between Washington and Ankara in the last week is only one of two crises enveloping Turkey at the moment. The Turkish lira is in a free fall as investors sell it off over concerns about economic mismanagement and uncertainty caused by the strain between the United States and Turkey. No doubt there are a lot of people in Washington busy developing three, five, and 10-point plans to save the Turkish economy and the U.S.-Turkey relationship. They are wasting their time; there is nothing for the United States to do.

And the "why" question, according to his view, is answered in the following way:

It should be clear by now that there is no strategic relationship. Turkey and the United States have different interests and priorities.

As simple as that.

This is in fact a view much shared by various commentators in Ankara. But of course, the underlying reasons as cited by Cook are much different. That also shows that Ankara and Washington, DC have become worlds apart.