‘Baraklava’ Still Pleasing Crowds in Turkey

By Marc Champion

Much of the world considered Tuesday’s mid-term U.S. election a stinging rebuke to President Barack Obama. But among many in Turkey, it may only have increased his stature.

Owner of the Gulluoglu Baklava shop, Nadir Güllü, shows off his Obama baklava.

At the Karakoy Gulluoglu landmark bakery in Istanbul, the “Baraklava” – giant image of President Obama made in Turkey’s flaky, sweet baklava pastry – is still pleasing the crowds two years after it was made in honor of Mr. Obama’s election, says proprietor Nadir Gullu.

“Maybe the mistakes [that led to the Democrats’ drubbing in midterm elections] weren’t his, but the people around him,” says Mr. Gull. When he pulls out the Baraklava, “even Iraqis and Iranians start smiling and snapping pictures,” he says.

Mr. Obama remains personally more popular in Turkey than his policies or the U.S. itself, a curiosity, given the series of disputes and wrangles the two Cold War allies have had over Armenia, Israel, Iran and other issues since he came to power. But Turks appear to have disassociated Mr. Obama from the U.S. administration as a whole.

“Turks generally believe Obama is sincere, but has not been able to do what he wanted,” says Kerim Balci, a columnist who describes himself as speaking for Turkey’s “religious majority” and is now editor of a recently launched foreign policy magazine, Turkish Review.

According to Mr. Balci, among religious Turks sympathy for Mr. Obama’s stock may even have risen over the past two years. Often called “Black Turks” and excluded for decades from power by a dominant, military-backed secularist elite, religious Turks sympathized with Mr. Obama as the first black American president, he says. They likened his struggles to get things done once in power with similar entrenched resistance that has faced Turkey’s Islamic leaning government.

“They had sympathy for him when he was elected because he was black, and in the view of these religious Turks, now seems even more black,” says Mr. Balci.

In Ankara, Mr. Obama’s sliding popularity is a real concern among policy makers, though. A weak administration could prove more difficult for Turkey in sensitive areas from relations with Israel, to negotiations with Iran, analysts say.

Other politicians are drawing the opposite conclusion, that Mr. Obama will discount the possibility of a second term and carve his own swathe through the last half of his presidency, says Mr. Balci. “They think: now we’ll have ‘our’ Obama, finally,” he says, though he believes that view is “utopian.”

Despite all the disputes the government has had with Washington, the idea is now dawning that Mr. Obama could be a one-term president, says Suat Kiniklioglu, a parliamentarian and foreign affairs spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development party. If that turns out to be true, he said, “both Turkey and Europe might have to grapple with another president from the Republican, Tea Party strain and that would be very hard to deal with, for many of us.”

That kind of president wouldn’t get a baklava at Gulluoglu’s. Asked what would have happened had he made one of former U.S. President George W. Bush, Mr. Gull said: “Some people told me they’d smash my shopfront windows.”

via ‘Baraklava’ Still Pleasing Crowds in Turkey – Washington Wire – WSJ.