Reps. This month, Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) introduced a bill to ask the State Department to remove Turkey from its Bureau of European Affairs and instead place Turkey in its Bureau of New Eastern Affairs.
It is a good, long-overdue idea. Secretary of State Marco Rubio should embrace it immediately, even prior to a congressional vote.
The bureaucratic divisions with which the United States categorizes the world are artificial. The Defense Department, for example, long assigned Israel to U.S. European Command because the Pentagon feared Arab leaders would boycott American generals who openly visited Israel. Pragmatism had consequences, as the Pentagon’s willingness to treat Israel as if it were alien to the Middle East acquiesced to antisemitism and signaled Washington was not serious about regional integration and normalization. It also enabled Arabists within U.S. Central Command to run amok with conspiracy and antisemitism; they could internalize, repeat, and amplify what Saudi or Qatari generals said without worrying about any serious pushback. Israel’s 2021 transfer from EUCOM to CENTCOM reflected the Abraham Accords and was long overdue.
State Department bureaucratic divisions can be as arbitrary. In 1997, I interned at the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan, which was then part of the Bureau of European Affairs. In 2006, the State Department shifted Tajikistan into the newly created Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. The move made sense: After all, Tajikistan has more in common with Uzbekistan and Afghanistan than it does with the United Kingdom and Austria.
Other bureaucratic divisions remain arbitrary. The State Department includes Sudan, for example, in the Bureau of African Affairs, even though Sudanese themselves would likely identify far more with those in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.
Shifting Turkey to the Near East Bureau would reflect reality and strengthen American diplomacy.
First, after almost a quarter century of Erdoğanism, Turkey is a Middle Eastern state. That’s just reality. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once called himself the “servant of sharia [Islamic law]” and described Turkey’s military as “the army of Muhammad.” He unravels Turkish secularism, promoting the Muslim Brotherhood with the enthusiasm of Qatar and the economy of Yemen. Photographs show his trucks delivering supplies to al Qaeda in Syria. Documents show his family profited from smuggled Islamic State oil, and Turkey now colonizes parts of Cyprus, Syria, and Iraq. According to Freedom House, after Russia and Belarus, Turkey is the least free state in Europe; its rankings are more representative of Middle Eastern states.
More than symbolism is at stake. By including Turkey in Europe, the State Department skews policy just in terms of its size. Turkey has a far greater population than its European neighbors but is equivalent in size to Iran. Because the State Department seeks consensus, efforts to assuage Ankara often come at the expense of democracy, rule of law, and religious freedom. Allowing Turkish concerns to shape U.S. policy is akin to allowing Iranian interests a seat at the table when crafting counter-proliferation policy.
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Shifting Turkey would also close a loophole U.S. diplomats have exploited since former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. To avoid “clientitis,” the tendency of some diplomats to go native, the State Department forces specialists in each geographic bureau to serve at least one tour in a different region. This benefits diplomacy by ensuring a broader perspective. For Middle East specialists to serve their outside tour in Turkey and pretend they gain a European perspective is risible. Classifying Turkey as Middle Eastern would slam the door shut on this scheme.
U.S. foreign policy is at its strongest when the State Department calibrates diplomacy to reality rather than wishful thinking. It is two decades past time to shift Turkey within Foggy Bottom’s bureaucracy.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.