Transcript: Gaining Influence? Turkey and Changing US Policy
Danny Hoffman: Hello everyone. My name is Danny Hoffman. I’m the director of the Henry M Jackson School of International Studies here at the University of Washington. And today is February 9, 2026, now if you’re familiar with the Jackson school, you know that we take very seriously our role as a community resource for expert opinion and analysis of world events past, present and future. Over the past year, we’ve begun posting these podcast style interviews with some of the many scholars, practitioners, students and faculty who come to Thompson Hall to share their insights on everything from China’s contemporary foreign policy to Samoa’s connection to American football. We record these interviews in our attic studio at the University of Washington campus, so there’s always the chance you’ll hear in the background the sounds of an old building students outside on the quad, or the seagulls just outside our window. Now for today’s recording, I’m very pleased to turn things over to my friend and colleague, Dr. Reşat Kasaba. Dr. Kasaba is a sociologist whose research spans the history and politics of the Middle East with a particular emphasis on the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. He’s widely recognized for his scholarship, his leadership in international studies as an interdisciplinary field, and his teaching here at the UW. He also happens to be one of my predecessors in the role of director of the Jackson school, having led the school from 2010 to 2020 so Reşat, first of all, thank you very much for doing this.
Reşat Kasaba: Thank you very much.
Danny: Reşat will be in conversation today with Dr. Gönül Tol. Gönül is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and the founding director of the institute’s Turkish studies program. Her area of specialization is Turkish politics, US Turkey relations and regional dynamics in the Middle East. Dr. Tol was an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies and has taught at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University. Some of you may be familiar with Gönül already, thanks to her extensive writing and public appearances in sources ranging from foreign affairs, The New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy and the Financial Times. She’s the author of the 2023 book, Erdoğan’s War, a strong man’s struggle at home and in Syria. This evening, she’ll be in conversation with Reşat for our Trump in the world 2.0 speaker series. Gönül, welcome to the UW campus. And thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Great. And with that, Reşat, I will turn it over to you.
Reşat Kasaba: All right. Well, thank you Danny, and thank you Gönül for being here. So we’re going to keep this mostly focused on Turkey and Turkish politics, but of course, and its place in the region and some global implications by way of Trump. We are coming to the quarter century mark of Trump’s presence in Turkish politics. It’s a presence that grew constantly in these 25 years, and this is looks to me like a good place to kind of take a look back, and I’d like to hear your view of this long span in which he first became prime minister and then eventually president and executive president?
Gönül Tol: Well, what is striking to me, I live in Washington, and often many people, they have strong opinions for about President Erdoğan, and one of the questions that that they ask me when they ask about his long tenure is the role of ideology. Many people assume that ideology is the main driver of his domestic policies and foreign policy. When I look at his more than longer than two decades rule I mean reshaping basically turkey. That’s one of the questions that I try to look at. His ideology actually driven his policies. And my answer to that is, I don’t think there was a particular ideology. I think he’s first and foremost a populist. And, you know, populism, it’s not an ideology, so it doesn’t really offer solutions to problems. Populists like Erdoğan, they match – it’s almost a style, political style, so they match that populist style with different ideologies, and the kind of ideology that they pick for at that particular time depends on their domestic political calculation. So Erdoğan, when he first came to power in 2002 and I could say maybe up until 2011, he framed his movement, his party, as a conservative Democratic Party. And I think the reason for that was he really wanted to have a big tent. He wanted to cultivate, he wanted to establish this ideologically large coalition to be able to achieve what he wanted to achieve. So his goal was to make sure that his secular opponents, particularly the military, was sidelined and he understood from previous experience that for a politician to be able to politically survive in Turkey, that politician could not directly clash with military. So that’s why he wanted to form this large alliance with different groups from different ideological backgrounds. So that’s why he framed himself as a guy who’s not an Islamist anymore, and he called himself a conservative Democrat. But later on, once he achieved his goals by 2011 he switched gears, and he framed himself as as an Islamist leader, not just a leader of Turkey, but he also saw himself as the leader of the larger Muslim nation and he embarked on policies to Islamicize society at home, and you could also see traces of that ideology in his foreign policy. And the goal then was to grab, expand his powers, grab unchecked powers, and to be able to do that, he realized that he had to rely on the country’s conservative segments, Islamists, Kurds, Turk conservatives, and so that Islamist ideology became the glue. But that strategy also failed. And when that failed in 2015 when his party lost the parliamentary elections, parliamentary majority, then this time, he picked Turkish nationalism to match with his populist style. For me, when I look at his long tenure, that is a very, particularly interesting dynamic, how he picks and chooses different ideologies. And the second thing, as you said, Reşat, is he’s in his 70s. I think he’s been he’s run the country for such a long time, and we tend to think about his legacy. What will his legacy be? And obviously it depends on whom you ask. But for people like me who cares deeply about democracy and human rights, he has transformed the country in a way, in such a dramatic way, Turkish democracy, before he rose to power, was never perfect, but he took an imperfect democracy and took it to a whole new level and made it into a textbook case of autocracy. To me, looking at his rule through that, that lens is very interesting.
Reşat: Yes, I’m going to come back to the future in a few minutes. But can we say, I mean, what you’re describing seems almost there is a degree of opportunism in the way he switched between different kind of alliances that he formed over this long period of time. But underlying this and populism, did he have a vision that he was trying to somehow realize by grasping on these things. And if so, what do you think that vision was?
Gönül: I think again, I don’t think it was this Islamist vision. Now this is not to say that he’s not an Islamist at heart, but from a political science point of view, if you want to call a politician Islamist, that Islamism has to be translated into policy. And to me, his first terms in power, I just don’t see that Islamist agenda. So what was his vision? Then? Did he have a vision, or was there a road not taken? So those are the questions when you when you try to answer them, I realize that I think his vision has always been staying in power. Now that’s not that different from any other politician, but what makes Erdoğan different is, I think, the lengths that he was willing to go to make that happen – that’s number one – and number two, he exploited societal cleavage so well that it almost opened the way for him to take that imperfect democracy into this autocratic track. To me, that’s really interesting, right?
Reşat: I agree with you. I mean, there are, as you know a lot of people in Turkey who think that he always had this agenda in mind from day one, it was everything else was just for show. I never really believed that, and I agree with you that this is something that became more obvious as we move along. Would you agree that perhaps one constant throughout this time was for him to take advantage of this post-cold war vacuum in the Middle East and somehow position Turkey in a position of influence at first, I think maybe he thought this could be through European Union, when that didn’t happen through Arab Spring, and now we’re going into different directions. Do you think is that a constant? Was that a constant? Or do you see that also as something that was emerging gradually?
Gönül: I think what was constant was his use of foreign policy as a tool to consolidate power at home. And he did. He did that masterfully. I mean, so can you imagine in when he came to power, when he said that he was not an Islamist anymore, and people, unlikely people, people who would not otherwise vote for an Islamist, rooted politician voted for him, believed him. And you ask, why? I mean, why did those people think that he was all new reform, reformist, new with a new vision. And then you have to look at his policies. I mean, he said that getting Turkey into the European Union was at the heart of his agenda. And I remember, shortly after his party won the elections in 2002 a journalist asked him what his focus going to be moving forward and asked a question about the headscarf. And at the time, there was a ban on headscarf. And he said, he dismissed that. He said, No, no, no headscarf. Removing the head scarf ban is not my priority. My priority is to make Turkey a real consolidated democracy, and to be able to do that, I’m going to get Turkey into the European Union. So for people who were always worried about democratic consolidation in Turkey, that was music to their ears. They really wanted to believe him, because he was saying all the right things. And not only he was saying all the right things, he initially did the right things. I mean, if you remember, he carried out all those EU reforms, right? But in hindsight, I mean, he did all those things not to consolidate Turkish democracy but consolidate his power and get rid of his secularist opponents. And that was a brilliant strategy. So there you realize that he used that foreign policy, that pro EU, pro-Western foreign policy, to burnish his democratic credentials at home and convince otherwise skeptical constituencies. I think that’s what’s been constant, that that using foreign policy to build his domestic image, for example, from 2011 onwards, when he set his sights on a different goal, which was switching the country’s parliamentary system to an all powerful presidency. Again, he turned to foreign policy, because at a time when he had already consolidated power, but he wanted more power, the Arab uprisings broke out, and he realized to burnish his Islamist credentials, he decided to throw his support behind those Islamist parties trying to topple the autocratic regimes in the Middle East. There too, foreign policy became very instrumental, and even today, I would say his role has never been more vulnerable. Turkish economy is in a horrible state. His ratings are down. People are suffering, and yet, using foreign policy, he’s able to keep his constituency together. So I would argue that instrumentalizing foreign policy has been a constant.
Reşat: So it’s very interesting. I do you think? I mean, there’s here, as you know, in this country, there’s always this conversation about Trump, that his base doesn’t really care about foreign policy. They really want the prices to come down. What happens in Venezuela et cetera is not that important to them. What do you think about Turkey? Do you think Erdoğan’s base just because of this Islamist link? Feel that this is an important enough element, especially since he has switched dramatically in terms of Egypt and places like that. What do you think about that?
Gönül: I think it’s really interesting because domestically, he doesn’t have that much room to maneuver, right? I mean, he’s already jailed all his opponents. How many more can you jail? There is a structural economic problem. I mean, how are you going to solve those problems? When it comes to domestic politics, there are limits to what he can do in terms of make things better, better for the people, and that would require opening up the democratic space, which is something that he doesn’t want. So that means he’s squeezed at home. He doesn’t have much room to maneuver, so he turns to foreign policy to be able to communicate to the people that we are a great nation. Yes, inflation is high. Economy is in horrible shape. Our institutions don’t work, etc, etc. You don’t trust in institutions police. But we are a great nation because, look, I’m shaking hands with President Trump. Look at all these world leaders who are coming to visit me. We’re signing all these defense agreements. I am a world leader because we are a first-class country. I think in that regard, Turkish society, yes, they are fed up many things at home, but on the other hand, if you look at public opinion polls, Erdoğan’s foreign policy is not as unpopular as his domestic standing. People actually like what he’s doing on the foreign policy front, because it touches a nerve. It makes them proud. I remember shortly after, Erdoğan had a meeting at the White House with President Trump, and President Trump showered him with praise, said he was a great leader. And I remember speaking to my friends who are very critical of Erdoğan, and I said, what did you think, and they said that they were really proud that their president was praised by the American President, the strongest man in the world. So that tells you how Erdoğan is able to tap into foreign policy, to communicate, to fill that gap in maybe people’s hearts.
Reşat: Yes. On the one hand, you can just, if we don’t go into the details, you can say that he’s been fairly successful. I mean, he’s able to go to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Jordan and they gave him this huge medal or something in Jordan and then comes with all these titles and recognition. So obviously he appeared, and then he controls Syria for all intents and purposes. That was a big gamble in some ways. So that might be a success, but still, this comes at a time when, as you said, he is very vulnerable at home. It seems that the only way in which he will allow elections to happen is that there is no viable candidate to run against them. He’s not going to permit that. But despite that, this is really, you know, the economic situation is pretty bad. So how does he maneuver here? I mean, how far will these foreign policy postures do you think will carry him to deal with this domestic crisis.
Gönül: I think the key here is Turkey’s growing indigenous defense sector. After Erdoğan lost municipalities in 2019 his party lost almost all major municipalities in the country. And why is that important? Because they’ve been a great source of revenue for his client listed network. So after he lost those he increasingly turned to the defense sector to generate revenue. And on that front, he’s done really great. Turkish defense sector is being recognized by the world. Is this, this growing industry? Turkey has a great industrial manufacturing base, so that, I think is both helping with his legitimacy deficit and it’s also helping Turkish economy. But at the end of the day, obviously, that’s not the solution. I think the solution is he has to stick with the current finance minister’s plan. Mehmet Şimşek is his name. He put together this, this economic plan. And he’s hoping that it will deliver results soon. So Erdoğan has to stick with these orthodox policies, which he had refused for many years. So that’s number one. People still need to feel that because, I mean, if you go to Turkey, the first thing you’ll realize how expensive the country has become and the levels of poverty is nothing that I’ve seen before. So he has to fix that again. I don’t know whether Mehmet Şimşek will deliver results anytime soon. And the second thing, the second challenge there, is what’s going on in the world. We are in a world where there is this geoeconomic fragmentation, great power competition. It really hurts countries like Turkey, Turkey’s economy is very much integrated with the European economy. And then you have the European Union signing this deal, for example, with India, with free trade deal. And that really hurts Turkish economy, because Turkey’s economy is so dependent on the European Union. But then you have the EU who is so afraid of tariffs and the policies that Trump put together that it is working on a B plan, and that B plan does not involve Turkey, so that’s why there are just many challenges facing Erdoğan at the moment. But one thing that works in his favor is, and I just saw this public opinion poll today, I think about 70% of Turkish population thinks that the economy is in horrible shape, Erdoğan is not doing a great job with economy But an equal number of people think that the opposition will not do a better job. So you have the problem that Erdoğan is blessed with a weak opposition now, I mean, to their credit, I think Turkish opposition is waging a fight with its two hands tied behind its back. I think the opposition leader is doing a tremendous job, but there are just so many structural problems hurdles in front of him.
Reşat: Yes, I mean, one part of this, of course, is the well, before I come to that, I wanted to ask a little about this whole Kurdish opening. But before that, can you say a few things about Putin? In a way they’re so weakened by the war in Ukraine, but is that now a non-factor in regional politics, or what is Putin’s position in relationship to Turkey or Iran or the Middle East?
Gönül: Well, certainly the Ukraine war has damaged Putin but on the other hand, I mean, many people expected that all these Western sanctions against Russia would just break Russian economy. It hasn’t really happened, because he restructured Russian economy around defense, and things are working fine, and yet, yes, Ukraine has been a huge distraction for him. But on the other hand, I think especially in Putin’s relationship with Turkey, there’s a delicate balance here. For a long time, Turkey was the junior partner in that relationship because it was dependent on Russia for its energy needs, and also because of Russian presence in Syria. Erdoğan really needed to work with Putin and relied on a green light from Putin for whatever he wants to do in Syria. So in many ways, Russia was the big the big brother in that relationship. And then Russia invaded Ukraine. And starting from that, that relationship changed, because Erdogan threw an economic lifeline to Putin. There are just hundreds of Russian companies operating in Turkey, so Turkey is basically helping Russia circumvent the Western sanctions. So that empowered Erdoğan in that relationship, and one other factor that really changed things in Erdoğan’s favor is the toppling of Assad. Once Assad was gone, Putin lost that leverage that he has used so masterfully against Erdoğan. But this doesn’t mean that any party is willing to just throw away this relationship. Putin is still very important to Erdoğan, but the two countries are also competing in different theaters too.
Reşat: And Turkey is still important natural gas from Russia, and oil.
Gönüll: That’s right. I mean, but, but less so Turkey has been taking steps to decrease its energy dependence, and one of the things that it came up with was producing this building, this LNG infrastructure, I think in that regard, Turkey did a great job, because one of the worries was that Russian energy became so cheap that Turkey kept buying and buying and buying more. So since 2022 I mean, if you look at the trade numbers, it just tripled. And that became a problem, because we have Trump in the White House, who says, you know, you have to stop buying Russian energy, or I’m going to sanction you. And since then, Turkey has been taking steps and. So this is to say it’s today, less dependent on Russia, but it’s still dependent.
Reşat: So just want to go back to this Kurdish issue, and along the lines of what you said earlier, Erdoğan’s skillful use of various groups in the country to kind of improve his own chances. And I see this opening that is spearheaded by the leader of this ultra Nationalist Party, which gives it a different kind of credibility in the Turkish context, and letting him take the lead, and then really driving this, what I see is a very significant break in the Kurdish political community, and that, of course, serves its purposes quite well. So is that? How you read this? This is just a way in which, without really sacrificing much, that he’s able to really marginalize an important opposition group in the country.
Gönül: That’s true. I mean, both the PKK and Erdoğan, they have their own reasons why they agreed to this. So from Erdoğan’s point of view, he’s facing elections in 2028 and the current Constitution does not allow him to run again, so he has two options. He can either draft a new constitution that will allow him to do so, or the parliament will have to ask for early elections, in which case he can run to be able to do both of those things, he needs the pro Kurdish party, which is the third largest party in the parliament. He needs their support. So I think that was the number one driver behind this. And why has the PKK agreed it’s been fighting this war against the Turkish state since the 1980s. Why now, you would ask, and the PKK has its own reasons. I think they realize that they’ve been defeated militarily. In Turkey, there are very few PKK militants left in northern Iraq, which is their headquarters. It’s Turkey’s drone war has really damaged the PKK, and the political space in Iraq has shrunk. It’s really suffocating the PKK. So Turkey has recently cultivated these close ties with Baghdad, and last year, in 2024 I believe Baghdad made the decision declared the PKK as a banned organization. Now that’s short of declaring it a terrorist organization, but still a banned organization, which really shrunk the PKK space in Iraqi politics. So all those things really made life harder for the PKK. That was one consideration. And the second one was that the PKK thought that, okay, we don’t have militants. We haven’t really waged a war. We haven’t launched a real attack inside Turkey. Anyway, in northern Iraq, we are squeezed, but we will always have Syria, because the Syrian Kurdish militia there is organically linked to the PKK, so they thought we have something important going on in Syria. There is a Kurdish autonomous region. American military is arming and training us, so we can always defend, quote, unquote, that revolution and give up everything else if this will get Turkey off our backs. So that was the calculation. But obviously, on the Syrian front, things are not quite playing out that way, but I think that’s how both parties see it.
Reşat: So let’s perhaps, this is like reading tea leaves, but let’s look at the future a little bit, and you talked about legacy, and for anyone who’s in his 70s and not in very good health either, I’m sure this is something that’s in his mind. And I am really surprised. There was a time when we would look at Middle Eastern politics, and we would look up, you know, Erdoğan’s children and Hafez Assad’s sons, and who will which is more likely to come in, and we seem to be in that place now in terms of who will come after him, even though there is the democratic procedures are still there on some level. And so there seems to be really people are positioning themselves without really appearing to be doing that. How do you see the next steps. I mean, if there is election, if he gets elected, then that’ll be his next task to make sure of that because I don’t even know if the party could survive without him or a leader like that.
Gönül: I think his plan is, you’re right he’s not in great health, but I think he can run another term, and I think he will. But the question is who comes after him. And I think that’s very important for him – because if I were him, I’d be deeply worried about the future my children and grandchildren once I’m gone. So I think he must be thinking about that a lot. And one solution is to name his son as the head of the AKP – the ruling party. Now AKP as you said it is not what I used to because, it basically becomes a vehicle for corruption for distributing rents and all that. But it still is a political party. And if you name your son, Bilal Erdoğan, as head of the party, you provide that institutional capacity which will shield him and his family from prosecution, I think. And once he’s gone, I think he’s grooming his son. I hear these other suggestions and people talk about the foreign minister Hakan Fidan and the intelligence chief, and Erdoğan is a person who I think would only trust his own blood. So I think that’s what his plan is. The question is with all these populist leaders, you can’t really replicate the chemistry they have produces, the chemistry with their followers. But Bilal is not a very charismatic man but can he keep the party together? I think he can. I think that why we keep seeing him more often in public these days.
Reşat: Maybe as a last question, let me ask you, what keeps you up at night about Turkey? What are you most worried about?
Gönül: It seems like this is a nice problem to have, but I worry about post-Erdoğan Turkey because of the damage he’s done. It’s not easy to undo them. We’re talking about 23 years, 24 years and when I go to Turkey I realize how the society itself has changed dramatically. I mean the people don’t trust each other, they don’t trust the institutions. Growing up, I grew up in Turkey in the 1980s, so many things did not work but certain things worked perfectly. The ballot box – there was no question in anyone’s mind, whether I voted was there fraud or you took the university exam and you would never question whether someone would steal the questions to get ahead. Or you would trust the institutions, the courts. Now all that is gone. And so for the next leader who comes after Erdoğan, and assuming this will be a democracy-loving leader, who will want to put things back on track, where do you start? How do you build that societal trust? So that does worry me.
Reşat: I mean it’s also 25 years, you’re talking about a generation who doesn’t have a living memory of a time where those institutions worked properly. Gönül, thank you very much. This has been very nice. We learned a lot
Gönül: Thank you so much. Great conversation, thank you.
