Turkey's foreign relations after the referendum

Frankly, Turkey's foreign relations had started to look not so bad after the first advances against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria in the framework of the Euphrates Shield operation. A Syrian ceasefire deal was cut with Russia and Iran, leading to the Astana talks, and even the December assassination of Russian Ambassador to Ankara Andrey Karlov could not disrupt it.

The first problem emerged as Donald Trump took over the U.S. presidency in late January. Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan had hoped that Ankara's relations with Trump would be better than they were with Barack Obama, especially on two subjects in particular: The first was Obama's pick of the People's Protection Units (YPG) as a partner in the anti-ISIL fight on the ground in Syria. For Turkey, the YPG is the Syria extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and thus just another terrorist organization that should not be worked with. The second subject was the demand for legal action against Fethullah Gülen, the U.S.-based Islamist preacher who Ankara sees as being behind the foiled military coup attempt of July 15, 2016.

A number of ranking Turkish figures have visited Washington DC, including Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, to make contact with names in the new administration and to make progress on those two issues. But Trump has so far given Erdoğan a cold shoulder. Despite meeting with many leaders up to now, the two men have only had one telephone call, back in February. It seems that Trump is determined not to make any close contact before Turkey's April 16 referendum on whether to shift to an executive presidential system.

The second big problem in Turkey's foreign relations emerged as Erdoğan started to make reinstating the...