Turkey, once a pillar of U.S. foreign policy and NATO’s eastern anchor, now challenges Washington with its authoritarian turn and unpredictable foreign policy. As democracy and authoritarianism collide, the U.S.-Turkey relationship is being redefined at the crossroads of strategic necessity and political divergence (Abrami, 2025). The combination of divergent foreign policies, economic strains, and a growing ideological divide has made the U.S.-Turkey relationship one of the most complicated in the modern era, which can best be characterized as confrontational with elements of cooperation and interdependence (Castaldo, 2018; Kirişçi & Sloat, 2019; Özdamar, 2024).
The U.S. and Turkey have been engaged in a complex negotiation of their respective roles. For Turkey, the relationship with the U.S. has become a balancing act as it seeks to assert its regional influence while navigating its ties with the West and non-Western powers, especially Russia (Paquin, 2024). For the U.S., Turkey’s drift away from Western ideals and its increasingly independent foreign policy have been a source of frustration as they challenge the U.S. vision of NATO solidarity and global stability (Kibaroğlu, 2019). One of the key factors contributing to the deterioration of U.S.-Turkey relations in the past decade has been Turkey’s domestic political transformation under Erdoğan. (Castaldo, 2018). For the U.S., Turkey’s internal developments, particularly after the July 15 2016 coup attempt, raised questions about the country’s commitment to the democratic principles that underpinned its relationship with the West (Kirişçi & Sloat, 2019; Paquin, 2024).
During the Obama administration, the U.S. and Turkey had shared strategic interests in the Middle East, which was the primary motivation for maintaining strong security ties with Ankara. The U.S.-Turkey relationships are often conceptualized as a confrontational turn during the first Trump administration. Despite Trump’s affinity with autocratic leaders and transactional approach to foreign policy, some of the most significant problems in U.S-Turkey relations raised during their first presidencies of Trump, such as Turkey’s growing ties with Russia, its military operations in Syria and its disregard for NATO’s collective defense agreements. Turkey deepened its geopolitical independence during this period while having increasingly strained relations with European allies (Paquin, 2024).
The focus on democracy and human rights has been a central theme of Biden’s foreign policy. In contrast to Obama and the first Trump administration period, Biden openly criticized rising human rights violations in Turkey, such as Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention (Cerami, 2021). Furthermore, Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense systems increased the tension. Consequently, the U.S. removed Turkey from the F-35 program. Concerning Turkey’s increasingly independent foreign policy aligned it with Russia, the S-400 deal symbolized a departure from the U.S.-Turkey alliance. As the war in Ukraine enhanced, Turkey followed a pro-Ukrainian policy without being anti-Russian and opportunistically used its veto concerning the NATO membership application of Sweden and Finland to re-negotiate U.S.-Turkey relations. Following a wait-and-see approach before Turkey’s last presidential and parliamentary elections in 2023, Biden quietly maintained U.S. cooperation with Ankara (Kibaroğlu, 2019).
In 2019, the U.S. withdrew from northeast Syria, and Turkey’s unilateral military offensive against Kurdish forces following the U.S.’s withdrawal, in other words conflicting motivations of the U.S. to defeat ISIS and Turkey’s focus on preventing Kurdish autonomy along its borders led to a more contentious period in U.S.-Turkey relations (Kirişçi & Sloat, 2019; Paquin, 2024). In addition to the economic and political tensions between the U.S. and Turkey, Turkey’s unorthodox monetary economic policies, rising inflation, and economic instability have further distanced Turkey from its traditional Western partners and prompted it to seek alternative alliances with Russia and China (Paquin, 2024). Recently, despite Turkey’s diplomatic relations and bilateral ties with Israel prior to October 7, as well as seeing the second Trump presidency as an opportunity, President Erdogan has strongly criticized diplomatic and military support of the U.S. sustaining Zionist settler colonial state Israel’s military actions in Gaza (Zanotti & Thomas, 2024), including Trump’s Gaza plan (Hayatsever & Gumrukcu, 2025). In light of all these facts and evaluations, we view U.S.–Turkey international relations as confrontational.
References
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Atmaca, A. Ö. (2014). The geopolitical origins of Turkish-American relations: revisiting the Cold War years. All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace, 3(1), 19-34.
Castaldo, A. (2018). Populism and competitive authoritarianism in Turkey. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 18(4), 467-487.
Cerami, C. (2021). Turkey, Europe and women’s rights: The controversial debate on the Istanbul Convention. Nuovi Autoritarismi e Democrazie: Diritto, Istituzioni, Società (NAD-DIS), 3(1).
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Hayatsever, H. & Gumrukcu, T. (2025, February 13). Turkey’s Erdogan says Trump’s Gaza plan is ‘major threat’ to world peace. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkeys-erdogan-says-trumps-gaza-plan-is-major-threat-world-peace-2025-02-13/
Kibaroğlu, M. (2019). On Turkey’s missile defense strategy: The four faces of the S-400 deal between Turkey and Russia. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs, 24(2), 159-174.
Kirişçi, K., & Sloat, A. (2019). The rise and fall of liberal democracy in Turkey: Implications for the West. Foreign Policy at Brookings, 1-19.
Özdamar, Ö. (2024). Role Theory in Practice: US–Turkey Relations in Their Worst Decade. International Studies Perspectives, 25(1), 41-59.
Zanotti, J., & Thomas, C. (2024, September 26). Turkey (Türkiye): Major Issues and U.S. Relations. Congressional Research Service, R44000. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44000