Paris was struck with several concerted terrorist attacks claiming more than 100 lives last night. Suicide bombers took 43 lives in Beirut the evening before. More than 100 people died in a blasts at a pro-peace rally in Ankara a month ago. ISIS claimed responsibility for Beirut and Turkish government identified the Ankara bombers as ISIS operatives. ISIS is not only a Syrian or Levant problem as of tonight, and G20 meeting will take place with this understanding in the world leaders’ minds.

President Obama will participate in the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey Nov 15-16 2015.  In a Financial Times op-ed, he showed that his priorities for the summit lie in the economic arena.  The recent terrorist attacks and the ongoing refugee crisis will likely make Syria and ISIS the main theme in one-on-one meetings between leaders.  Erdogan will definitely bring it to the table in his meeting with President Obama.  The two leaders do not see eye to eye regarding the best way to resolve the Syria issue and it will be a big challenge for Obama to convince Erdogan to get Turkey’s support behind the American led alliance in Syria.

This is President Obama’s second visit to Turkey. His first visit was a leg of his first European tour after his first inaugural as President (April 6-7 2009).  When he addressed the Turkish parliament during this visit he said:

Obama will be meeting with Erdogan as an elected president rather than a prime minister.  He is emboldened by the unexpected success of his party AKP in the recent election. It will be difficult for Obama to make a team player out of an aspiring Sultan and leader of the Ummah.

Since the 2009 Turkish referendum on constitutional amendments,  judicial independence is in decline and it has become increasingly more difficult to talk about the separation of powers in Turkey. Freedom of press also deteriorated with government control over many media outlets and intimidation of the remaining opposition media.  Detention and incarceration of journalists, media bans on sensitive issues, raids on press and TV buildings, and prevention of digital broadcast have become routine.  Cizre and Silopi, Kurdish towns in the southeast, were under de facto siege before the November election.  After the election, urban warfare in Kurdish towns such as Silvan has intensified.  Erdogan has grown more authoritarian and his political power and dominance in Turkey may make him as unyielding as Putin.

What’s more problematic for international affairs is Erdogan’s regional ambitions, which emanate from his neo-Ottoman aspirations. These aspirations have been feeding off of the post-Arab spring chaos in the region and they have also been feeding the chaos in return, especially in Syria. For the US, Turkey was a useful Muslim regional ally in regional negotiations (e.g between Israel-Palestine, Iran nuclear negotiations).  After the Arab-spring swept away the long time authoritarian allies in the Middle East and brought instability instead, the United States’ need for an ally is more acute  However, that’s not the proper role for Erdogan’s New Turkey: New Turkey calls the shots itself!   What Erdogan has in mind for himself as a leader and Turkey as the new regional leader does not always fall in line with policies Obama government would like to implement.

Erdogan was partly responsible for ISIS becoming a strong and destabilizing force in Syria.  Turkish secret service allegedly supplied arms to the opposition forces in Syria (against Assad government).  Initially, Syrian militants were housed and received medical treatment in bordering towns in Turkey.  And needless to say, Turkey allowed free passage to international militants to pass into Syria to join ISIS.  Erdogan is intent on bringing Assad down, and he supported ISIS to achieve this end.  Now ISIS is not only a Syrian or Iraqi problem, it is a problem for Lebanon, for Turkey, for France as well.  Considering the refugees fleeing their country because of the ISIS violence, ISIS is a problem for all of Europe.

Both the US and Erdogan want Assad gone, they agree on this.  The disagreement is over who to support in the fight against the Assad regime.  The US is now leading an alliance primarily consisting of Kurdish groups and this is a problem for Turkey.

Kurds are a major source of disagreement and divergence in Turkish and American policies. American and European powers focus on eliminating ISIS in the short term and establishing stability without Assad in Syria in the long term.  Of course, a solution to the Syrian refugee crisis is at the heart of both these goals. Turkey’s priority, however, is preventing any type of Kurdish autonomy in Northern Syria, preventing the PKK stage attacks into Turkey from south of its Iraqi and Syrian borders, and manage the spillover of instability from Syria into the Kurdish provinces across the border.

Erdogan government prefers ISIS over Kurdish autonomous regions.  The autonomous Kurdish region in Northern Iraq has been providing safe havens for the PKK since the 1990s, and autonomous Kurdish regions in Syria is feared to pave the way for a united Kurdistan including southeastern Turkey.  There are hints that Turkish government is giving leeway to ISIS in return for using it to curb Kurdish ambitions and activities.  ISIS operatives carried out a deadly attack on activists who convened in Suruc to go to Kurdish controlled Kobani to help reconstruct the city.  ISIS was found responsible for the bombing of a HDP election rally in Diyarbakir in June and the most deadly terrorist attack in Turkey’s recent history on Oct 10, 2015 in Ankara at a peace rally supported by HDP and attended by Kurds. The outrage grew when it became evident that security forces had knowledge of the suicide bombers’ ISIS connections and released them. PM Davutoglu said after the bombings that they had a list of suicide bombers but could not apprehend them before they carried out an attack because, you know, rule of law!  The joke was on  the many intellectuals and journalists who have been detained and imprisoned for “thought crimes.”

The United States uses the Incirlik base in  Adana, Turkey to stage its operations against ISIS.  Continuation of the use of the base and prevention of any lifelines to ISIS are musts if the US led alliance is to succeed against ISIS.  That means, Obama and Erdogan have to come to a mutual agreement and abide by it.  This is what their meeting at G20 will be about.  Obama will definitely sweat in getting Erdogan come clean about Turkey’s “support” to ISIS and bringing it to an end.  There has to be some guarantees about curbing Kurdish aspirations, otherwise Erdogan is unlikely to budge.