Biden recognising the Armenian Genocide shows that Turkey is no longer a US priority

Turkey’s President Erdogan is “upset”. He says US President Biden has opened a “deep wound” between their two countries. To heal it Biden must reverse his decision to describe the 1915 massacre of Christian Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

And if he doesn’t? Well, Erdogan will be forced to “implement the new practices required by the new level to which our relations have fallen.”

Strong words. The problem for Erdogan is that Turkey doesn’t have a great deal with which to back them up, which is why Biden broke with decades of diplomatic tradition and used the G-word. Put simply, under Biden, Washington is not prepared to put up with the Turkish leader’s behaviour any longer and this was a way of letting him know.

No US president since Ronald Reagan has called the events of 1915 genocide. On the campaign trail several candidates said they would, Barack Obama for example, but on taking office he decided it wasn’t worth angering Turkey, instead he simply threw Armenian-American voters a sop by referring to “Meds Yeghern,” an Armenian term meaning “great catastrophe”. 

Times change. The US is slowly reducing its military strength in the Middle East and has announced a full withdrawal from Afghanistan. Turkey’s geopolitical importance to the Americans is diminishing accordingly. Even the Pentagon, previously a brake on Washington using the term genocide, has hardened its view on what it sees as the black sheep of NATO. The purchase of the Russian S-400 missile-defence system has not been forgiven, nor did a recent televised threat against US troops in Greece by one of Erdogan’s top advisors to teach “the Americans how to swim in the Aegean waters” go down well. Mesut Hakki Casin’s remarks were a reference to the drowning of thousands of Greeks in the 1923 Greco-Turkish war as they tried to escape the coastal city of Smyrna as the Turkish troops “taught Greeks how to swim”.

In recent years Erdogan’s assaults on the judiciary, media, and fair elections have made him an easy early target for Biden to prove his campaign pledges to stand up for human rights across the globe will be fulfilled.

Biden was careful to describe the genocide as occurring in the Ottoman era to avoid blaming the modern Turkish Republic, but the Erdogan administration still reacted with fury describing it as outrageous, baseless, and unjust. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said “We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past.” The US ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, and the President himself commented “If you say genocide, then you need to look at yourselves in the mirror… The Native Americans, I don’t even need to mention them… what happened is clear”. Turkey accepts that many Armenians were killed in clashes, but denies it was systematically orchestrated and puts the number killed at 150,000 not 1.5 million.

This week Turkish officials have hinted that in retaliation for Biden’s move the bilateral Defence and Economic Cooperation Agreement could be frozen and American bases closed. This threat has been made before about access to an early-warning radar base at Kurecik, and the Incirlik Air Base which hosts US tactical nuclear weapons, but never carried out.

In the event Ankara did go that far then the Americans would look to the new options which have arisen in the past few years. They wouldn’t want to lose their first-choice locations but the hugely improved military relations the US has with Greece would kick in with the probable upgrading of bases there. Washington has also spent the last decade working to bolster the Romanian navy due to its location on the Black Sea and proximity to Russia. It might also try to coax the UAE into allowing more American equipment to be based there.

So, Erdogan is running out of friends, leverage, and options, while Biden holds another card. The Turkish economy is in crisis and in desperate need of foreign investment. Kicking the Americans out of Incirlik would hardly encourage an inflow of investment dollars or tourism.

NATO does not want to lose Turkey, and we are still far from it leaving, but that has been the slow direction of travel for several years now. President Trump, recognising a fellow populist, indulged Erdogan. Biden has signalled that will not happen on his watch. The new American president left it two months before calling the Turkish leader, and then it was to tell him that the following day he’d be saying that what happened to the Armenians was genocide.

The two men have agreed to meet at the NATO summit in Brussels in June. Erdogan will still be upset, but Biden will not be reversing his decision.