Turkish-American relations operate along three distinct channels: diplomacy between the two foreign ministries, military ties between the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the Pentagon, and direct contacts between heads of state and government. While leadership-level relations set the overall tone, the three tracks can diverge significantly, as they do now.
Washington currently holds two competing views of Türkiye: that the country is more strategically valuable than ever, yet that the Prime Minister's office is an unreliable partner for coordinating shared policy. The result is what columnist Cuneyt Ulsever of Hurriyet describes as effectively frozen ties at the leadership level.
By contrast, diplomatic relations are running warm. Ulsever credits the Foreign Ministry with applying pragmatic, ideology-free analysis to issues such as Iraq and Iran, distinguishing it from both the more ideologically driven Prime Minister's staff and, in his view, Washington's own approach. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is singled out as the period's most effective statesman.
Military relations remain the most opaque dimension. The TSK largely repaired the damage caused by Türkiye's March 2003 refusal to allow US troop deployments, but future Pentagon-TSK cooperation will depend heavily on revisions to Türkiye's Anti-Terror Law and on how President George W. Bush defines the authority of the incoming US Joint Chiefs chairman.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in June 2006, in its own words.