The worsening US diplomatic and geopolitical dispute with longtime Middle Eastern NATO ally Turkey looks set to spiral increasingly out of control as the summer of 2018 draws to a tumultuous conclusion, and will more likely than not accelerate the decline and ultimate fall of American power and influence in the entire region.
The fundamental error that the Trump administration is making with respect to the Turkish government of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the assumption that the latter has not already carefully assessed the costs and benefits of ending its seven-decade security partnership with Washington - now increasingly obviously an antiquated relic of a Cold War that ended over a generation ago.
To date, Trump's ratcheting up of threats and actual penalties against Ankara has betrayed this smug assurance: that Turkey at the end of the day has no choice but to submit to American demands because its prosperity and security depend on American goodwill. In fact, as of the July 15, 2016 putsch that nearly ended Erdogan's rule in a sea of bloodshed, this was already no longer the case; today it is even less so. Many illusions are being exposed by the US-Turkish riff, and over time these will be thoroughly shattered - leaving the Middle East and indeed much of the rest of the Eurasian supercontinent in a brand-new geopolitical era in which the noticeable feature will be the virtually complete marginalization or even absence of the United States from the most prominent decision-making processes and fora.
First and foremost, the further consolidation of Turkish political power in the single person of Mr. Erdogan will more than offset any short-term advantages Trumpian Washington thinks it gains with the tanking Turkish economy and financial markets; these will continue, but almost certainly will be contained well above a level that seriously threatens the sitting Ankara administration. In the meantime, the buoyant strength of the domestic US economy that Trump and his supporters endlessly brag about will be increasingly revealed to be a hollow instrument for exerting influence and pressure in Mideast hot spots where US military might is already demonstrably overrated as an arbiter of national destinies.
Secondly, Turkey already gains less from its residual partnership with America than it potentially stands to gain entering into a more formal and permanent security and economic alliance with Russia and China. The latter two are geographically closer and socioeconomically much more proximate to the domestic Turkish situation than is the US; they see far more eye-to-eye with Ankara on its critical national and security interests in its immediate neighborhood than does Washington, whether under the Trump administration or formerly Obama's.
Third, despite protestations which the White House might make to the contrary, the US military presence in Turkey still constitutes a major component of American power and prestige in the Middle East - one that it would be loath to relinquish when push really came to shove. Especially if it were to end in such a drastic manner as in a bilateral tit-for-tat of sanctions and reprisals, it would mark a major defeat of US strategic objectives which would reverberate far beyond the region itself. Under these circumstances, there is little reason to expect the Erdogan administration to hold its fire on further hostile and punitive actions against Trump's perceived bullying - if the Turkish leader reasonably feels that his authority is beyond challenge come hell or high water for his nation's economy, he stands to gain and not lose politically with a harsher stance on Washington, knowing that the final ace in the hole of American military bases in the country belongs to him and not Trump.
And last but not least, all this is unfolding in a broader international environment of growing backlash against the blatantly nativist and protectionist stance of the Trump administration in its second year in office; as a US trade war with China heats up even as the multilateral European Union belatedly tries to rescue the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Iran nuclear deal, the space for American diplomatic maneuver to improve Washington's own comprehensive strategic position has shrunk considerably. That means time is not on Trump's side, but rather on that of his various opponents - and if this is the case when the US economy is clearly outperforming all others, how much more will this be so when the vaunted boom loses steam, which it inevitably will.
In conjunction with the Iranians, the Turks are thus calling America's giant Mideast bluff - the bluff of presuming to continue to dictate the region's will even as the current White House pretends that it has the option to simply pull out if it cannot do so, given that it now has energy independence. The cold hard reality for the US is palpably becoming more and more unsettling to the point of downright alarming: it must assert its imperious will with ever greater vehemence yet simultaneously ever smaller efficacy, because to do otherwise would be to admit that, for all its president's bluster, the erstwhile unchallenged superpower hasn't been made "great again."
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