ISTANBUL // As they prepare to host Barack Obama, the US president, Turkey's leaders are looking forward to the attention their republic will receive as a country that serves as a bridge between East and West. But just underneath the surface, problems linger. Turkey is the first Muslim country Mr Obama will visit since taking office in January. Although Washington has made it clear that the president will not give his long-awaited speech on future relations between the West and the Islamic world during his stay in Ankara and Istanbul from April 5 to April 7, the trip symbolises the importance the US attaches to a strategic ally and Nato partner that has borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria.
"In the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans and in matters like energy security our positions and priorities are the same," Ahmet Davutoglu, chief foreign policy adviser to Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told Turkish media after a recent visit to the United States. "We hope that we will enter a golden age in our co-operation." Turkey has played an active role in Middle East peace efforts recently, organising indirect talks between Israel and Syria as well as "taking messages from the Americans to the Iranians", as one western diplomat said.
But Mr Obama's visit, which will see an unprecedented security operation with several thousand policemen on duty, may not be just about harmony and friendship. America's war in Iraq and what is perceived as Washington's one-sided position favouring Israel have been deeply unpopular in Turkey. Critics doubt that Mr Obama will usher in a fundamentally new US foreign policy in the region. "The policy of a big power does not change just because there is a cuter president," said Koray Caliskan, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bosphorus University.
A poll released this year showed 44 per cent of Turks regard the US as the biggest threat to their country and that only four per cent see America as Turkey's most important friend. Personal approval ratings for Mr Obama were much higher, at 39.2 per cent, compared to the 9.2 per cent approval for his predecessor, George W Bush, in a similar poll four years ago. Like many people around the world, Turks welcomed Mr Obama's election victory last year.
Still, Turkish-American relations have not yet fully recovered from the shock they received in 2003, when Ankara turned down a request by Washington for the deployment of US ground forces on Turkish soil to be used in the attack on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Today, the expected demand by Washington to use Turkish territory for the planned troop withdrawal from Iraq could open some old wounds between the two countries.
The US military would like to use the Incirlik air base near Adana in southern Turkey to bring troops and weaponry out of Iraq in the coming year. Mr Caliskan said the US wanted to turn Turkey into a "police station" full of weapons to keep an eye on developments in nearby Iraq even after the troop withdrawal. Leftist groups have said they are going to hold protest rallies against Mr Obama in Ankara.
Turkey is also concerned that Mr Obama may recognise the Ottoman genocide against the Armenians in 1915, as he promised he would do during his elections campaign last year. And just days before Mr Obama's arrival in the Turkish capital, Mr Erdogan, who raised eyebrows this year by storming out of a panel debate with the president of US ally Israel, said he did not like the American choice for the post of Nato general secretary.
In a television interview last week, Mr Erdogan said his country would not be happy to see the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, take over the top post of the western alliance this summer. Mr Erdogan stopped short of threatening to veto Mr Rasmussen's election, but he reminded viewers of the refusal of the Danish leader to apologise for the publication of the Prophet Mohammed cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2005.
Observers said they are also concerned that Mr Obama will ask a political price from Turkey for supporting the country's EU bid or for helping to end the isolation of the Turkish part of the divided island of Cyprus. "What will Obama want from us with respect to the Middle East and Iran?" wrote columnist Temel Iskit in the Taraf daily under the headline "Upcoming foreign policy problems". Mr Obama is expected in Ankara late on Sunday after taking part in the G20 summit in London, a Nato summit in Strasbourg and an EU-US-summit in Prague. In Ankara, the president will address the Turkish parliament and meet Mr Erdogan, Abdullah Gul, the president, as well as opposition leaders. He will then fly to Istanbul to take part in a meeting of the Alliance of Civilisations, a UN-sponsored initiative headed by Turkey and Spain that aims to promote dialogue between the West and the Islamic world.
tseibert@thenational.ae