Columnist Turker Alkan comments on the US presidential elections and Turkish-US relations. A summary of his column is as follows:
“Watching another country’s elections isn’t like watching a soccer game. You have to think about how the candidates would treat your country. And if the country in question is the US, which is both near and far from Turkey and has a large impact on us, you would certainly watch those elections differently.
At the same time, there will always be certain factors which might change the usual preferences for your country’s interests. We seem to be facing this situation now in terms of the US elections set for Nov. 4. Our leaders and many people interested in foreign policy favor the incumbent Republicans, who are more conservative than the Democrats. Why? Because they think that American liberals are more interested in human and minority rights and could disappoint Turkey by, for example, supporting the Greek Cypriots and Armenians on such issues as Cyprus or the so-called Armenian genocide.
But even in this situation, certain factors might change the usual preferences. The Iraq policies followed by the Bushes, both father and son, as Republican presidents hurt Turks’ views of Americans in general, not just certain politicians, and damaged our positive feelings for the US and its people. Yet perhaps the enthusiasm stirred by Barack Obama, the Democrats’ candidate, among both the US people and young Turks could help dispel the bad feelings over the Bushes and so warm up Turkish-US relations.
But an official Obama statement this week referring to the ‘Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus,’ as well as the campaign’s stance on the so-called Armenian genocide, also play a role. So while many university students in Turkey share their US counterparts’ enthusiasm over Obama, the same cannot be said of political circles. So if politicians who are campaigning for votes far away ignore Turkey, shouldn’t we remind them that that doing so carries a high price?”