Most Endangered Man In Turkiye?  Jeff Flake, U.S. Ambassador To Turkiye

If President Erdogan Is Re-Elected For A Second And Final Five-Year Term, Ambassador Flake’s Position Is Likely Untenable

Might His Replacement Be A Muslim?  Should His Replacement Be A Muslim?

Will EU Member Countries Replace Their Ambassadors?

President Erdogan Needs .52% From The 27,426,140 Voters Who Did Not Support Him In The First Round Of Voting On 14 May 2023 Or From New Voters.

·        “Our doors are closed to him from now on because he does not know his place. You should know how an ambassador should act.” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of the Republic of Turkiye (2014- ), 2 April 2023

When Ambassador Jeff Flake arrived with his wife and five children to Ankara, Turkiye, in January 2022, the retired one-term member of the United States Senate (2013-2019) and six-term member of the United States House of Representatives (2001-2013) representing the state of Arizona, was the lone politician member of the Republican Party serving as an ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary from the United States in the Biden-Harris Administration (2021- ).

Traditionally, whomever occupies The White House will appoint at least one member of the other political party to serve in the cabinet or as an ambassador or as a special envoy. 

Ambassador Flake was nominated in part due to his relationship with his Republican Party colleague John McCain from Arizona, who served in the United States Senate from 1987 to 2018.  Joseph Biden, 46th President of the United States (2021- ), considered Senator McCain a friend as they served together in the United States Senate (1987-2009) and engaged further when Vice President Biden served in the Obama-Biden Administration (2009-2017).  That Senator Flake was a critic Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States (2017-2021), was of value too.

President Erdoğan was not enthusiastic about the selection of Mr. Flake by President Biden.  He believed the nomination of Mr. Flake was intended as a slight- appointing a conservative Republican who was perceived to have been dissuaded by President Trump from seeking re-election.

Officials within the Erdogan Administration believed Ambassador Flake has made good faith efforts to enhance the relevancy of the United States Embassy, despite the substantial impediments constraining an improvement of the bilateral relationship.  In 2022, a new US$300+ million United States Embassy became operational in Ankara.

If President Erdogan is re-elected, the Biden-Harris Administration will need to quickly make it known if Ambassador Flake is to be retained or replaced.  President Erdogan will not receive enthusiastically a career diplomat, a retired politician, or retired private sector executive who is not recognized as substantial, processing gravitas.  Two members of the United States House of Representatives, one from the Democratic Party and one from the Republican Party, have family connectivity to Turkiye.  A prominent surgeon of Turkish descent was the 2022 Republican Party nominee for the United States Senate representing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 

Might this be an opportune moment to nominate a Muslim, perhaps of Turkish descent, as United States Ambassador to the Republic of Turkiye?  Consider the relevancy timeline for the next five years: 

• Should he win, President Erdogan’s second and final term will coincide with nearing 80% of the terms for the next presidents of the Russian Federation and Ukraine, nearing 70% of the term of the next president of the United States, nearing 75% of the next terms of the leadership of the European Union (EU) and European Council (EC), and nearing 90% of the term of the next Secretary-General of NATO. 

The twenty-seven country members of the Brussels, Belgium-based European Union (EU) and thirty-one country members of the Brussels, Belgium-based North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are likely too re-considering their postings in Ankara.

• European Union (EU): Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.

• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Albania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Romania, Germany, Slovakia, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary, Spain, Turkiye, Latvia, and North Macedonia.  The Kingdom of Sweden awaits approval from the governments of the Republic of Hungary and the Republic of Turkiye.  

For Antony Blinken, United States Secretary of State (2021- ), whomever will be at the United States Embassy in Ankara will have an official tenure until 12:00 pm on 20 January 2025, the end of the Biden-Harris Administration.  Unless it continues to 12:00 pm on 20 January 2029.

Regardless, President Erdogan will serve his second and final five-year term- so he won’t be going anywhere until mid-2028.  That is through the remaining nineteen months of President Biden’s first term and nearly to the end of what he hopes to be his second term. 

Replacing Ambassador Flake should not be viewed in Washington or in Ankara as a capitulation, as an acknowledgement of failure.  It is, taking from the Washington DC lexicon, recognizing realities on the ground and like the military adapting to the environment.

Although electoral analyses predict a 28 May 2023 victory for President Erdogan, he could lose.  If the 86.9% voter turnout on 14 May 2023 is the same on 28 May 2023, then to win President Erdogan needs 270,884 votes, .49% more than the 27,133,837 he received during the first round of voting.

• His opponent, Kılıçdaroğlu, needs 5.13% more votes than the 24,594,932 he received on 14 May 2023.  The third-place finisher on 14 May 2023, Sinan Ogan of the Ancestral Alliance received 2,831,208, or 5.17% of votes cast and has since endorsed President Erdogan.  For President Erdogan to win, he needs just 10% of the Ancestral Alliance votes.  For Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu to win, he needs to combine all his previous votes with new votes- either from those who did not vote on 14 May 2023, those who previously voted for President Erdogan, or those who previously voted for Mr Ogan.  Traditional voting models ascribe to fewer voters casting ballots during a second-round.  Most concerning for President Erdogan will be voter complacency- that those who voted for him on 14 May 2023 will believe that he will again prevail, so they view voting again as not essential.

The consensus among political analysts is for a victory by President Erdogan on 28 May 2023.  That is the result almost all governments are predicting.

However, If President Erdogan should lose the second round of voting on 28 May 2023, then Ambassador Flake may well receive a request from President Biden to unpack his luggage and recall the moving van. 

Daily Sabah
Istanbul, Turkiye
2 April 2023

“We need to teach the United States a lesson in this election,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Sunday. The president, who will face the opposition bloc’s candidate and Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as his leading contender, was angered over the latter’s meeting with U.S. Ambassador Jeff Flake. As a result, he said he wouldn’t receive Flake anymore.

Flake met Kılıçdaroğlu last week at the CHP offices. A brief statement by the embassy said it was “part of continuing conversations with Turkish political parties on issues of mutual interest between our two countries.” But such preelection visits triggered an alarm in Türkiye, which is engaged in a volatile relationship with the U.S., and Washington is governed by a president who was openly hostile toward Erdoğan in the past.

Though he tried to maintain balanced ties with Ankara, Biden’s remarks in 2020, before he took office, are still fresh in the memory of the Turkish public. “What I think we should be doing is taking a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership,” Biden said in a New York Times interview, adding that Erdoğan had to pay the price. They should encourage the opposition to defeat Erdoğan.

“Joe Biden spoke, and now you see what his ambassador here does,” Erdoğan told an audience during a visit to the Idealists’ Club in Istanbul, an affiliate of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) ally, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). “He visited (Kılıçdaroğlu). It is a shame. You are an ambassador, and you have to know how to act. You should be engaged with President (not Kılıçdaroğlu),” he said.

“I wonder if he will be ashamed to ask for an appointment from my office. But I tell him now. Our doors are closed to him from now on because he does not know his place. You should know how an ambassador should act,” Erdoğan said.

Türkiye and the U.S., which are still close allies in NATO, still have outstanding issues, especially since Biden took office. A lagging F-16 sale by the U.S. to Türkiye is among them. Türkiye is also critical of U.S. support for the PKK's Syrian offshoot, the YPG, under the guise of a fight against the Daesh terrorist group.

Although Erdoğan’s AK Party is aligned at a position in the international community neither fully pro-Western nor fully supportive of other world powers, anti-American sentiment became more visible in the Turkish public, especially after Biden’s remarks which are viewed as an intervention to another country’s domestic affairs even by the Turkish opposition.

The opposition bloc led by Kılıçdaroğlu found almost a united front of support in the Western media recently, with more anti-Turkish and anti-Erdoğan coverage adorning the pages of publications like The Economist. Most articles in the Western press with an opposition bias portray Erdoğan as an autocrat and Türkiye as a country backsliding into a dictatorship. In contrast, the Kılıçdaroğlu-led opposition bloc is portrayed as “a new hope.” Anti-Erdoğan stance most recently manifested itself in a Wall Street Journal article penned by former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, who called his readers to support the opposition and NATO to force Türkiye out the alliance if Erdoğan wins the elections.

Flake already angered Turkish officials after he joined fellow ambassadors to shut down the missions last year over “security concerns.” Though the U.S. did not shut down its consulate in Istanbul after a heightened terrorism alert (which was denied by Türkiye), Flake was criticized by Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu. “Türkiye has the misfortune of having U.S. ambassadors seeking to plot coups in our country. Every U.S. ambassador has been engaged in efforts to harm Türkiye. They also try to dispel same advice to ambassadors of other countries,” Soylu said in February, implying that Flake urged fellow diplomats to shut down their Istanbul consulates. Soylu has also said they were also aware of “which journalists” the U.S. ambassador “directed” to pen articles (against Türkiye). “I openly tell them to get their dirty hands off Türkiye,” Soylu said cryptically.

United States Department of State

Ambassador Flake was nominated by President Biden on July 13, 2021, to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Turkey.  He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 26, sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris on December 10, and assumed office upon his January 2022 arrival in Turkey.

Ambassador Flake served as a United States Senator representing the State of Arizona from 2013-2019, prior to which he represented Arizona as a Member of Congress from 2001-2013.  While in the Senate, he served on the Foreign Relations, Energy and Natural Resources, and Judiciary Committees and the Select Committee on Aging.  He was chairman of the Senate’s sub-committees on Africa & Global Health Policy, and Privacy, Technology & the Law.  While in the U.S. House of Representatives, he served on the Appropriations Committee.

Most recently, Flake served as a Distinguished Dean Fellow at Arizona State University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Sorensen Center for Moral and Ethical Leadership at Brigham Young University.  He also served on the Senior Advisory Committee at Harvard University’s highly prestigious Institute of Politics.  A frequent public speaker, Flake also has been a contributor for CNN and CBS News.

He is a former Executive Director of the Goldwater Institute (a public policy research and advocacy organization) in Phoenix, Arizona.  Early in his career, Flake was Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Namibia during that nation’s transition to independence.

Flake earned a B.A. in International Relations and an M.A. in Political Science at Brigham Young University.  He is a recipient of the Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage from the University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.  Flake spent time in Zimbabwe and in South Africa as a missionary, where he learned to speak Afrikaans.  Flake is married to Cheryl Flake (née Bae), and they have five children.

From Ambassador Flake’s Biography: “After serving six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, Senator Flake was elected to the United States Senate, where he served for six years. While in the Senate, Senator Flake chaired the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology & the Law, which sits at the intersection of innovation and regulation. He also chaired the Africa Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, where he passed landmark legislation on wildlife trafficking and democratic governance.  Prior to entering Congress, Senator Flake served as executive director of the Goldwater Institute in Arizona. He also directed the Foundation for Democracy in Namibia during that nation’s transition to independence. Senator Flake holds degrees in International Relations and Political Science from Brigham Young University.  Known for his ability to work across the political aisle, Senator Flake was the lead House Republican in the successful effort to prohibit spending earmarks, and the lead Senate Republican in the successful effort to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba.”

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