Eight years ago, Turkey was awash with optimism when Barack Obama was elected president. The unprecedented entry into the White House of an African American with Muslim ancestry was, in itself, a source of joy to thousands of Turks who were looking forward to a new era in which loathed secularism would gradually recede and devoutness and piety would prevail beneath the firm grip of a state that would promulgate laws consistent with the religious and historical roots of the Anatolian peoples who are Muslim “to the very marrow of their bones”. To add to the optimism and excitement of the times, then prime minister Erdogan had succeeded in consolidating his power after a series of trials that sent top military brass to prison and set in motion his plans to build a “new Turkey” that would be unveiled to the world on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the republic in 2023. Warm congratulatory messages flew back and forth across the Atlantic and Ankara looked forward to relations that were already strategic but promised to be “more than special”. Eight years later, the mood could not be more different. One cannot miss the resentment and revulsion among political elites and the media, and a mounting hatred directed against Uncle Sam and, specifically, Obama who, in the words of Ibrahim Karagul, columnist at Yeni Safak and one of Erdogan's most ardent supporters, “dragged the region and Syria above all to an enormous catastrophe and drove the US towards the front of terrorists groups until it became a state that sponsored terrorism”. Referring to Obama, Karakul added, “the dream of millions had become, in the eyes of all, a mere servant for the current corrupt global order.” As for Turkey, “political history will record that [the attempted coup that] occurred on the night of Friday 15 July was manufactured in America using as its instrument the terrorist Gulen Organisation.” The question, of course, is whatever happened in between to make the powers-that-be in Ankara turn so sour? At the outset, Ankara and Washington shared similar views on many things. Above all, they saw eye-to-eye on the events in Egypt after 30 June 2013, even if they differed in their ways of referring to the “coup against an elected president”. But soon they began to diverge. Erdogan felt that Obama was not being tough enough against the “Sisi regime” and he was incensed when Washington resumed normal relations with Egypt. The two sides would grow further apart over the questions of Syria and Iraq. Washington turned a blind eye to the logistical and military facilities and equipment that Turkey provided to the radical takfiri militias fighting the Bashar Al-Assad regime, which one would have thought would have earned Obama a smile and a wink of gratitude from Erdogan, now comfortably ensconced in his newly built sumptuous presidential palace in Ankara. Instead, the Turkish president fumed because his US counterpart kept avoiding Ankara's vision for a definitive solution to the Syrian civil war that has been raging since February 2011, a solution that involved the US sending in ground forces. On top of this, the White House persistently opposed Ankara's demand to create a buffer zone inside Syria. But that was nothing compared to the American action that made Erdogan really see red and that triggered unprecedented levels of tension in Turkish-US relations: The Pentagon moved to back the pro-Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the People's Protection Units (YPG) that were proving to be the most effective reliable force on the ground in Syria in the fight against Daesh. Ankara regards those organisations in Syria as extensions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which both Turkey and the US have labelled a terrorist organisation, and it infuriated Erdogan that Obama refused to agree with him and attach the “terrorist” label to the PYD and YPG as well. In Iraq, developments would further aggravate tensions. Ruling circles in Turkey realised early on, starting from the time of the former Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki, that its US allies were not listening to it attentively enough. More disturbingly, Washington was more inclined towards the points of view of Baghdad and implicitly supported what the Maliki government wanted. The same continues to apply with the government of Haider Al-Abadi with regard to its demand that Turkish forces withdraw from the Bashiqa Camp in the Mosul district of Ninawa governorate and its absolute refusal to allow Turkish forces to take part in the operation to liberate the city of Mosul from Daesh. Then came the attempted coup, creating a dividing line between everything before it and everything after it. Part of that afterwards included a rise in anti-American vitriol and uninterrupted fusillades fired in the direction of Washington from Anatolian television stations, newspapers and minarets, cursing it for colluding with and protecting the coup-making mastermind, the Muslim preacher and former Imam Fethullah Gulen, who resides in Pennsylvania. Yet by a stroke of irony, Pennsylvania was one of those swing states whose 20 electoral college votes would settle the US presidential race in favour of Trump, “as though to punish the Democrats and declare its rejection of the presence of the Turkish preacher on its land,” as one pro-Erdogan commentator put it. Suddenly, behind the anger and scowls of the decision-makers in Ankara, the close observer could detect a surge of joy, relief and the thrill of schadenfreude at the defeat of Hillary Clinton which those decision-makers read as a stunning defeat for Obama. Merve Sebnem Oruc of the pro-government Yeni Safak reflects the mood. Obama won his race for the White House by criticising his predecessor George Bush Jr and calling for change, she wrote. Hillary Clinton should have done the same. She tried to appear independent at first but soon it became clear that she subscribed to the same policies as her president. Here was someone who was fielding herself as the first woman president of the US and a symbol of the future. How could she present herself to voters as an inseparable part of the past? Trump did precisely the opposite, Oruc said. This is why he won on the ticket to “make America great again.” “Certainly, we are not going to wait for those who tried to give us lessons in ‘democracy', ‘equality', etc, in their arrogant and selective way to take a look at themselves now and feel just a bit of shame,” Oruc continued. “It is sufficient that we understand very well what kind of country they are and how hypocritically they market themselves. Now, the one beautiful thing in this bleak picture is that the ‘democratic' mask to which Washington clung with such elitist anxiety has fallen and the US has shown its real face.” What she left unsaid, speaks volumes. The anti-thesis of that “democratic” face is a “dictatorial” one. No mention is made of Trump's xenophobia and his hostility to Muslims, Latinos and immigrants. What counts is that he is not wearing a mask, that he cares little for democracy and human rights and that his highest priority is “security and stability” — Erdogan's favourite mantra.
