Henri J. Barkey: Where Have Old Friends Gone? U.S.-Turkish Relations Since the Iraq War

Hosted by Boston University

Henri J. Barkey, chair of the department of international relations at Lehigh University, gives the 2008 Campagna-Kerven Lecture on Modern Turkey, the 13th in the series. He discusses a changing international system beginning with the end of the Cold War, new perceptions between the United States and Turkey, and different national interest issues within each country.

Barkey, a respected political scientist, former government official, and a leading authority on Turkey, predicts the next president of the United States will have to confront the issue of Turkey. He says that currently only 9 percent of the people of Turkey have a favorable opinion of the United States, but at the end of the Clinton era, more than half had a positive view. This is the result of a changing international system beginning with the end of the Cold War, new perceptions between the countries after September 11, 2001, and different national interest issues. These are related, he says, are, in fact, inseparable. Turkey became more important to the United States after the end of the Cold War; the country was an island of stability in the area. Turkey had been pretty much a secular country, but at this time Kurdish nationalism and religious parties and forces began to emerge.

Domestic policies now in both countries play an important role in their foreign policies. Northern Iraq, with its large population of Kurds, is a big problem today between Turkey and the United States. If the Kurds in Iraq try for independence, Turkey fears that Turkish Kurds will follow. The Kurdish genie is out of the bottle, Barkey says, let out by the United States, which has brought an independent Kurdish state closer to reality by initiating the Iraq War. The ironic thing, he says, is that Turkey and the United States want the same thing — a united Iraq as a buffer to Iran. He predicts a looming new crisis: the Turkish Supreme Court will probably ban the AKP, Turkey’s pro-Western ruling political party, which advocates a liberal market economy and Turkish membership in the European Union, in the next few months, putting the next American presidential administration in a quandary.

The Campagna-Kerven Lecture Series presents leading experts — journalists, scholars, business leaders, literary figures, and creative artists — on modern Turkey, as well as promising younger scholars and intellectuals. The series, begun in 1996, fosters informed public debate and seeks to improve the public’s knowledge of Turkish society and politics.

April 16, 2008, noon
The Castle

Video length is 01:36:41.

About the speaker:
Henri J. Barkey is the Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Professor and chair of the department of international relations at Lehigh University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has worked with policy planning for the U.S. State Department. He was awarded a Fulbright in 1990 and was named the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Public Policy Scholar in 2007. He has published numerous articles on Turkey and Europe, as well as the books European Responses to Globalization: Resistance, Adaptation and Alternatives, and Turkey’s Kurdish Question.

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