Ankara engages Washington less as a subordinate and more as a transactional partner. The United States, in turn, finds its influence confined to areas where structural interdependence still binds Turkey to Western systems…
By Dr. Dritan Hoti*
In the evolving theatre of global geopolitics, the question of whether the United States can still meaningfully shape the foreign policy of the Republic of Türkiye demands sober examination.
The inquiry is not merely empirical but philosophical: to what extent can structural power persist in a world of resurgent national agency?
This reflection considers the systemic legacy of American influence, the domestic transformation of Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the shifting dialectic between U.S. strategic utility and Turkish autonomy. It culminates in a recent illustration—Ankara’s issuance of international arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—which epitomizes the recalibration of influence in a multipolar world.
From the mid-twentieth century onward, U.S.–Turkish relations were born within the architecture of the Cold War. Under the Truman Doctrine of 1947 and through Turkey’s accession to NATO in 1952, Ankara became integral to the Western security perimeter. The United States provided military assistance, established bases, and embedded Turkey in a system of strategic dependencies that
linked its national security to Washington’s global containment strategy. Turkey’s geography—bridging Europe and Asia and flanking the Soviet south—cemented its status as an indispensable ally.
Yet even within this structural embrace, Turkish autonomy endured. Episodes such as the Cyprus crisis of the 1970s revealed that Ankara’s strategic calculus could diverge sharply from Washington’s expectations. American influence was therefore systemic rather than absolute—operating through alliance frameworks and institutional dependencies, but seldom through direct control. The Cold War’s end preserved much of this legacy, but as global polarity fragmented, Turkey’s room for
independent maneuver began to widen.
That widening became a defining feature of the Erdogan era. Over the past two decades, domestic
political transformation has recast Turkey’s foreign policy identity. What was once a secular, Western-oriented elite consensus has given way to a mass politics infused with identity, nationalism, and
historical self-consciousness.
Erdogan’s ascent reoriented Turkish foreign policy from alignment toward assertion—combining pragmatic realism with ideological ambition. The result is a hybrid foreign-pol-icy posture: still anchored in NATO and Western institutions, yet increasingly shapedby Ottoman legacies, regional
aspirations, and a quest for strategic self-sufficiency.
This evolution has diluted the efficacy of traditional U.S. levers—aid, alliance discipline, and diplomatic persuasion. Turkish agency now intersects with domestic imperatives: electoral legiti-
macy, religious sentiment, and nationalist rhetoric. Ankara engages Washington less as a subordinate and more as a transactional partner. The United States, in turn, finds its influence confined to areas where structural interdependence still binds Turkey to Western systems—defense procurement, intelligence sharing, and market access.
Even here, influence is conditional: the U.S. sale of F-16 fighter jets proceeded only after Turkey ratified Sweden’s NATO accession, illustrating a more negotiated form of leverage.
Contemporary American diplomacy toward Turkey thus operates under a dual tension: the necessity of engagement and the recognition of autonomy. For Washington, Turkey remains strategically
vital—its geography, military capacity, and reach across volatile regions render it too important to alienate. Yet this necessity has transformed influence into a utilitarian calculus. The U.S.–Turkey rela-
tionship has become transactional, not hierarchical. Washington employs incentives and pressures—economic, military, and diplomatic—but Ankara ultimately acts according to its own strategic
logic. Turkey’s recent issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
and senior Israeli officials over alleged war crimes in Gaza captures this new disposition. It represents a moral and geopolitical divergence from U.S. positions, underlining Turkey’s readiness to assert in-
dependent normative claims even at the risk of transatlantic friction. For Washington, this episode exposes the limits of persuasion: Ankara’s choices are increasingly dictated by its regional identity, domestic politics, and sense of historical mission rather than by alliance solidarity.
Nonetheless, American influence has not vanished. The structural imprint of decades-long coop-eration—through NATO, de-fense technology, and Western markets—continues to shape
Turkey’s options. The United States cannot dictate Turkish behavior, but it can frame the conditions under which that behavior unfolds. Influence has thus evolved from command to constraint, from
direction to negotiation.
In realist terms, the United States must accept that power in the twenty-first century is relational, not absolute. As Henry Kissinger might have observed, influence depends not only on capability but also
on the partner’s perception of autonomy. In Turkey’s case, Washington’s Cold War leg-acy granted it deep systemic leverage; Erdogan’s domestic revolution redefined that leverage into a more complex,
contested dynamic. Today, the relationship embodies what may be called constrained autonomy: Ankara operates with growing independence, yet remains enmeshed in a Western framework that continues to matter.
The broader lesson transcends the U.S.–Turkey dyad. It speaks to a world in which middle powers—driv-en by domestic legitimacy, regional ambition, and histor-ical consciousness—exercise unprecedented agency, even as they remain structurally intertwined with great powers. The United States can still shape, channel, and moderate Turkey’s foreign policy currents—but the era when
it could wholly redirect them has long passed.
*The author is a lecturer of international relations at the Mediterranean University of Albania. Article written for ISHGJ/AIG
