US-Greece-Turkey: It was too good to be true...
Hawkish Victoria Nuland, of Ukraine fame, delivers the news to hapless Greeks
With Ukraine going from bad to worse to the chillingly disastrous, US Under Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland was in Athens on April 5 for a zip-in-zip-out visit to confer with the GoG. Her meetings began with a tête-à-tête with PM Mitsotakis and follow-up talks with FM Dendias and DEFMIN Panagiotopoulos.
The Nuland visit took place against what many observers in Athens are beginning to see as a creeping American retreat from what earlier looked like Biden negatively “reassessing” America’s relations with Islamist terroristic Turkey that flourished under Donald Trump.
Many in Athens saw Turkey's removal from the F-35 fighter jet program, and Biden’s demand for Turkey to get rid of the Russian-made Tor air defense system or else, as signs of a “positive” US readjustment toward the Ankara bully threatening with war in the Aegean to conquer the larger Greek islands across from the Anatolian coast .
But, such Greek estimates eventually began to unravel.
The first sign Washington gingerly rewarming towards neo-sultan Erdogan arrived with Washington’s lowkey dismissal of the EastMed gas pipeline, involving Greece, Cyprus, and Israel—and earlier this week it was announced that…
The Biden administration believes a potential sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey would be in line with U.S. national security interests and would also serve NATO's long-term unity, the State Department said in a letter to Congress that fell short of explicitly supporting the deal. Turkey made a request in October to the United States to buy 40 Lockheed Martin-made F-16 fighters and nearly 80 modernization kits for its existing warplanes.
Greece and Cyprus reacted with thinly-veiled displeasure to the EastMed US retreat, while Israel, the perennial maneuverer, held her tongue and dispatched President Isaac Herzog to “reconnect” with the Erdogan Islamist regime and inaugurate a “new era” in bilateral relations (Herzog sped to reassure Athens that Greece-Israel cooperation, especially on defense and security, won’t be affected at all).
In Athens, Nuland telegraphed a strongly “positive” message to the Greeks re-assuring them that the rapid expansion of US-Greek defense cooperation under Biden, cemented with significant US military assets arriving for permanent deployment in Greece’s eastern region adjacent to Turkey (something that visibly niggled Moscow), is here to stay.
But Nuland, while remaining “enthusiastic” in her talks with Greek officials, did not hesitate to offer strong support to Turkey becoming a key partner of Greece, Cyprus, and Israel in tackling the natural gas crisis triggered by the Ukraine war (see a complete Nuland exclusive interview to Greek daily Kathimerini in Greek here and excerpts in English here).
It is now rather clear that Greece’s hopes for a fundamental US change away from coddling the Turks were false. Before arriving in Athens, Nuland was in Ankara to inaugurate fresh mutual cooperation schemes aimed to bring the Turkish Islamists back into the fold as America’s full strategic partner.
As they say, The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same.
Turkey, US launch new strategic mechanism amid Ukraine crisis
The long-awaited Turkish-US strategic mechanism aims to set up regular channels to help the two countries cooperate where they can and prevent outstanding issues from blowing up into crises.
Following months of diplomacy, Turkey and the United States have launched a strategic mechanism to boost cooperation in areas such as economy and defense.
“There is a new energy in ties,” Victoria Nuland, the US State Department's undersecretary for political affairs, told the Turkish media after meeting with Turkish Foreign Ministry and Presidency officials. The new mechanism allows Turkish and American officials to talk about all of the issues, from trade to human rights and civil society, or regional issues from Syria to Ukraine, she added.
A US-Turkey joint statement on April 4 held out the possibility of a minister-level meeting later this year. According to diplomatic sources, this is likely to occur in Washington, marking the first official visit of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu since President Joe Biden took office.
The statement said that Nuland and Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal "met in Ankara to review topics of mutual interest, including economic and defense cooperation, counterterrorism, and key areas of shared regional and global interes.”
“If the U.S. and Turkey were old friends engaged in a dispute, this would be the moment they unblocked each other’s number,” joked Soner Cagaptay, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of “A Sultan in Autumn.” Diplomatic sources maintain that the aim is to focus on positive areas of cooperation, rather than dwell on the chronic problems that have dogged the relations.
“The launch of the mechanism is certainly the prelude to a more constructive era in the relationship,” Sinan Ulgen, a former diplomat and visiting fellow of Carnegie Europe, told Al-Monitor. “It will not be a cure-all to all the tough spots in the relations - from the US policy on Syria to Turkey’s acquisition of Russia’s S-400 missile defense system - but neither should it be dismissed as window dressing. The mechanism provides a comprehensive platform, with consultations at different levels, to deepen cooperation on issues such as trade or regional hotspots.”