US-Turkey relations are empirically difficult but they are open to maintaining relations despite differences
Eurasia Net 6/28 [2010, US-Turkish Relations Appear Headed for Rough Patch, Yigal Schleifer, http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61426]
To a certain extent, tension between Ankara and Washington is nothing new. What is different now, noted Carnegie’s Barkey, is that Ankara’s independent foreign policy course creates more opportunities for Turkey and the United States to have policy disagreements. “The Turkish-American relationship was always difficult. Let’s not kid ourselves. But on the other hand, the difference between then and now is that Turkish foreign policy used to be more self centered. Now, to their credit, they are playing a more global role, but that has meant that the points of friction have increased as a result,” he said. Sinan Ulgen, Chairman of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, an Istanbul-based think tank, says some of the tension with Washington may be built in to what is a fundamental and ambitious restructuring by the AKP government of Turkey’s previously more cautious and inward-looking foreign policy. “I don’t think the government has an anti-West agenda,” Ulgen said. “I think that Turkey cares less about how its foreign policy initiatives will be received in the Western capitals, and in particular Washington. This is very different from before.” It’s a new reality that Washington appears to be coming to terms with. In another recent interview, this one with the British Broadcasting Corp,, the State Department’s Gordon said: “We’re going to work very hard to preserve this partnership and cooperation.” Still, he added: “We never set as a blanket rule that everything Turkey does in the Middle East would be something we support, and there are times when we have differences with Turkey, and I suspect that it’s going to be that way for some time.”
AT: US-Turkey Relations low – Middle east engagement
Turkish engagement with the middle east doesn’t mean relations with the US are low
The Australian 7/3 [2010, Turkey acts to ease fears over Islamic ties,
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/turkey-acts-to-ease-fears-over-islamic-ties/story-e6frg6so-1225887296226]
TURKEY has hit back at accusations it is turning its back on the West in favour of closer ties with the Islamic world. The country insists that membership of the EU is its key foreign policy goal. "There is no reason to have any doubts about Turkey," President Abdullah Gul declared in a forceful interview designed to allay alarm in Europe and the US about its increasingly close relations with radical Middle East regimes. Turkey was not "lost", he said, denouncing such claims as "unacceptable" and stressing that Turkey was also forging ties far beyond the Arab world. "I consider it very wrong to interpret Turkey's interests with other geographic regions as it breaking from the West, turning its back on the West or seeking alternatives to the West. Turkey is part of Europe," he said. Mr Gul argued that the US and Europe should welcome its growing engagement in the Middle East because it was promoting Western values in a region largely governed by authoritarian regimes. Rebuking some Western politicians for their outdated views of Turkey, he insisted the country had undergone a "silent revolution". It was now a big economic power that had embraced democracy, human rights and the free market. It had become a "source of inspiration" in the region. "If this is not acknowledged, it's a pity," Mr Gul lamented.
AT: US-Turkey relations low – ME engagement
Turkey is making multiple overtures and concessions to the U.S. to resolve issues over Iran sanctions and Israel
The Times 6/30 [2010, Turkey Asks Iran to Return to Negotiating Table , http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703374104575336853114123616.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
ISTANBUL—Turkey on Tuesday called for Iran to negotiate with world powers as soon as possible over a nuclear-fuel swap deal, a show of frustration from one of Tehran's few allies during recent international sparring over how to address Iran's nuclear ambitions. The demand, which came a day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said there would be no talks until late August, showed Ankara's first signs of irritation with Iran since Turkey voted earlier this month against imposing fresh sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear-fuel program. Ankara had argued that the sanctions proposed by the United Nations Security Council would scupper an agreement that Turkey and Brazil had secured with Iran, under which Tehran would swap part of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium for higher-grade fuel rods. The Security Council resolution passed, with only Turkey and Brazil in dissent. Lebanon abstained. "If they do not sit down and talk, we will be in a worse situation this time next year," Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin told a press conference in Ankara, according to Turkish state news agency Anadolu Ajansi. "President Ahmadinejad mentioned August. We wish [the talks] would take place sooner." The U.S., Russia and France have proposed U.N.-brokered, expert-level talks with Iran on the fuel swap deal, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement Monday took Ankara by surprise, according to a senior Turkish diplomat. He said Turkey and Brazil, which hold rotating seats on the 15-nation Security Council, agreed to vote as they did on the condition that Tehran would continue to engage in talks on its nuclear program. "To keep Iran at the table, one of their conditions was [for Brazil and Turkey] to vote no, instead of abstaining," the senior diplomat told a group of reporters in Istanbul. "I don't think the Iranians want to antagonize us over this." On Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the freeze on talks didn't apply to discussions of the fuel-swap deal, leaving it unclear whether Tehran was ready for negotiations to begin before August or not. The fuel-swap deal was almost identical to one that the U.S. proposed last year. Under the Turkish-Brazilian deal, Tehran would deposit 1,200 kilograms (2,600 pounds) of low-enriched uranium in Turkey in exchange for fuel rods containing uranium enriched to a higher level of 20%, to be used in an Iranian medical reactor. Turkish officials say the U.S. administration endorsed the Turkish-Brazilian effort. Since the proposal was first extended last year, however, Tehran has expanded its stock of low-enriched uranium, lessening the value of the deal, and has said it is now enriching uranium to 20% levels on its own. Many Security Council members fear these advances could help Iran perfect the technology to enrich at higher levels required to produce a nuclear bomb. Iran says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful. On Tuesday, Mr. Lavrov said the proposed U.N.-brokered talks could take place only "under the understanding that Iran itself halts the 20% enrichment," according to Itar-Tass. Turkey's "no" vote, coupled with its tough response to Israel over the boarding of a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship on May 31, has triggered concern in Washington that Turkey, a longstanding ally and North Atlantic Treaty Organization member, is shifting its strategic orientation away from the West. The State Department's top official for Europe, Philip Gordon, said last week that Turkey's Western commitment now "needs to be demonstrated." "I'm really surprised he made that statement. We don't have to prove anything," said the senior Turkish diplomat, who described talk of Turkey changing its foreign-policy axis as "crazy." The diplomat echoed statements by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the U.S. and Canada over the weekend that an increasingly confident Turkey is asserting its commercial and political interests but remains committed to its Western alliances and to joining the European Union. With regard to Israel, the diplomat said Turkey didn't want to destroy the relationship and was trying to "give Israel a way out" of the impasse by offering conditions to fulfill, after which relations could normalize.
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