Turkish-American relations (2009-2019)
The article attempts to analyze the main vectors of development of US-Turkish cooperation from 2009 to 2019. The US foreign policy concept since 2009 was aimed at smoothing the “sharp corners” in the development of contacts with countries of the Middle East region and Turkey, in particular. By the beginning of B.Obama’s reign, US-Turkish relations showed a decrease in mutual trust in connection with the consequences of the Iraq crisis in 2003. At present, the relationship between Washington and Ankara can be described as a “systemic crisis”, which implies the existence of serious disagreements on issues of bilateral contacts. Regarding the strategic situation in the Middle East region at present, in particular, the destabilization of countries due to the “Arab spring”, problems in Iraq, and the consequences of the destructive civil war in Syria are a kind of test of the strength of the allied ties of the United States and Turkey. At the beginning of 2017, the new administration of D.Trump came to power in the United States, “raising the degree” of the differences between Washington and Ankara. The United States was not happy to the growing interaction of Ankara with Russia and Iran in Syria, to Turkish-Russian agreements on the purchase of an S-400 missile defense system. In this regard, many congressmen on Capitol Hill called on D.Trump to impose sanctions on Turkey. Thus, the Americans once again decided to put Turkey in a “tight framework” of the need to demonstrate their devotion to the United States and to the interests of the North Atlantic Alliance. Depending on how the D.Trump administration can overcome bilateral differences in methods and approaches in various foreign policy areas, the future development of a constructive dialogue between Washington and Ankara will depend.