Zeyno Baran
Director, Center For Eurasian Policy, Hudson Institute

President Obama made America human again--by reaching out to the various communities in Turkey, holding a town hall meeting with Turkish youth and giving a masterful speech in the Turkish parliament. He personified an America no longer afraid to interact with others on an equal footing. He was already hugely popular and I believe many Turks are even more hopeful that he will indeed bring peace and prosperity to Turkey's difficult neighborhood.

It was extremely important for him to refer to Turkey as a secular democracy; this once and for all ended the debate about whether the U.S. under the Obama administration would continue to see Turkey as a Muslim country or once again see it as part of Europe.

He often referred to American history and experiences and his personal life story to make his point, which was much more effective than just lecturing another sovereign nation about the things they ought to be improving, including the treatment of minorities and dealing with past traumas. In fact, the two countries have very similar founding principles of uniting people under the common citizenship concept, not under an ethnic or religious identity, yet both have fallen short of the promise at times. Turkey gave women their rights much sooner than the United States, yet its concept of being "Turkish" somehow moved from being an ideology like being an "American" to an ethnic one, thereby causing ethnic strife, especially between the Kurds and Turks, as well as other non-Turkish communities. For its part, the United States has redeemed itself by electing a black president, yet the Native American communities are still waiting for their justice and dignity.

I believe it was also important that during his speech at the Parliament, President Obama talked at length about George Washington and how important a figure he is for the United States. In this spirit, he praised Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his immense contribution to the creation of modern Turkey out of the ashes of a fallen empire. Although Americans sometimes are critical of Turks still holding Ataturk in such high regard and naming streets, schools, airports and many others after him as being stuck in the past, the capital of United States is named after President Washington, along with many other sites and even the delicious (Washington) apple! Turks and Americans may be closer than they think.

Soner Cagaptay
Director, Turkish Research Program, The Washington Institute For Near East Policy

There has been much confusion in the United States and Europe about Turkey's identity. Until September 11, Turkey was considered a NATO ally, a secular democracy and a member of the West. Suddenly, following September 11, this changed. Turkey became a Muslim ally, considered a model of Islamic democracy and a member of the Muslim world. Punditocracy began to describe Turkey as a "moderate Muslim state," and regional experts viewed Turkey as part of the Greater Middle East. A German Turk born and raised in Berlin told me that prior September 11, his friends referred to him as "the Turk." On September 12, he became "the Muslim." He added: "I had not changed in one night, but the world had."

With his Ankara address, Obama put the post-September 11 confusion about Turkey's identity to rest. The President started his speech with a rhetorical question: "I have been to...the NATO Summit in Strasbourg and Kehl, and the European Union Summit in Prague. Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message. My answer is simple: Evet (Yes, in Turkish)." The president added that Turkey belongs in Europe and the West and that "Europe gains by the diversity of ethnicity, tradition and faith." For Obama, Turkey is a country in the West that happens to be Muslim, rather than a Muslim country in the Muslim world.

This is good news for Turkey's democracy, and even better news for the Western orientation of Turkish foreign policy. In his address, Obama made strong references to Turkey's secular democracy and the need for the country to move towards European Union (EU) accession. Importantly, Obama set Europe and its liberal democratic traditions as Washington's benchmark for evaluating domestic Turkish developments. On foreign policy, lately a civilizational view of world politics has formed in Ankara, relativizing good and bad according to religion and splitting the Turks from the West. In the latest incident, at the Davos meeting in January, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan chided Israel's president for "killing people" -- and then returned to Ankara to host the vice president of Sudan. To encounter this religion-based civilizational view, the President referred to Turkey as a "resolute ally and a responsible partner in transatlantic and European institutions." Obama understands Turkey's strategic importance ―Turkey borders Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Russia, and is a staging ground for operations in Afghanistan and beyond. With his speech, Obama set NATO as a Western gauge for cooperation with Turkey on key foreign policy issues.

Steven Cook
Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

President Obama found that on the range of important issues from Iraq and Iran to Middle East peace, Turkey's policies are generally consistent with those of the United States. The Turks have long sought a stable, federal Iraq. The flowering of relations between Ankara and Irbil, the seat of the Kurdish Regional Government, combined with considerable Turkish investment in northern Iraq mitigates a complicating factor in Washington's Iraq policy. The situation in Kirkuk and the persistence of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) violence against Turkey remain flashpoints, but as the Turks and Iraqi Kurds develop closer ties, the magnitude of these problems diminishes, forestalling some of the most dire scenarios about Turkish military intervention that could unravel the progress that Iraq has made over the last eighteen months.

In the context of improved Turkish-Iraqi Kurdish relations, the Kurdish president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, has called upon PKK terrorists to lay down their arms or leave Iraq. For the United States, Turkey is no longer the malevolent wildcard in the game of stabilizing Iraq. Once more, President Obama's clear declaration that the PKK is a terrorist organization that present a common threat to Turkey and the United States helped reassure Ankara that Washington will not back away from 2007 agreement supplying the Turkish military "actionable intelligence" to combat the terrorists. This is likely to garner President Obama significant amounts of good with both the Turkish government and people.

Svante Cornell
Research Director for the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, School of Advanced International Studies

Mr. Obama's visit to Turkey was an important step in rebuilding Turkish-American relations and to restoring America's position in the greater Black Sea region. In particular, Mr. Obama's speech to the Turkish parliament should be commended for the offer of cooperation and restoring the strategic relationship between the two countries. On the whole, Mr. Obama's speech did include important signals to Turkey, but failed to state a number of important elements.

On the positive side, Mr. Obama departed from the misguided notion, popular in parts of the Bush administration, to give importance to Turkey as a "Muslim democracy", a policy that often slipped into support for "moderate Islamic" movements such as the ruling AKP. To many Turks, however, that was taken as an insult: why, many Turks asked, was their country's democracy qualified with the "Muslim" adjective, denying the country's long history of secularism? Mr. Obama did not mix Turkey's political system and its cultural identity. He explicitly paid homage to Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic, and made sure to emphasize the word "secular" when referring to Turkey as a "strong, vibrant, secular democracy" This is a positive factor, as it may rein in some of the AKP's efforts to undermine secularism, which the party has been able to advance with little reaction from the West and to the anger of secular Turks. If the Obama administration continues to emphasize the twin, interrelated elements of secularism and democracy, that will bode well for the future. Moreover, Obama's clearly equated al-Qaeda's terrorism with the PKK's terrorism - showing appreciation for the sensitivity of the issue, which will be key to the bilateral relationship.

But Mr. Obama failed to indicate awareness of the authoritarian tendencies of the AKP government, and of the deteriorating conditions for women in the AKP's Turkey. While speaking in general terms on the need for further reform, he did not allude to the government's onslaught on freedom of expression in the country, exemplified by the Prime Minister's public bullying of oppositional media, lawsuits against journalists, the shady takeover by pro-government businesses of media outlets, or the half billion dollar fine slammed on the country's largest and moderately oppositional media group. Neither did he mention the importance of ensuring women's representation in the workforce and in politics, both of which have declined rapidly since the AKP came to power.

Mr. Obama also glossed over Turkey's role as an energy corridor, but U.S.-Turkish cooperation in the Caspian region and its accomplishments could have emphasized more explicitly. Mr. Obama also referred only in passing to Turkey's role on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Yet Mr. Obama's hope that Turkish-Armenian relations will be normalized is entirely dependent on progress in that conflict. However, Mr. Obama did not reiterate America's own active participation in efforts to resolve that conflict. Indeed, the problem was on clear display as Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev refused to travel to Turkey for a meeting of the Alliance of Civilizations, in spite of phone calls from Hillary Clinton. Azerbaijan is understandably concerned by American and AKP support for a normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations that would not go hand in hand with Armenian concessions on the Karabakh conflict.

Omer Taspinar
Director, Turkey Project, Brookings Institute

The symbolism of this visit would have been much different had Obama decided to come to Ankara after visiting Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Tel Aviv and Riyadh. But a visit to Turkey after visiting London, Strasbourg and Prague is a whole different affair. The message is crystal clear: Turkey belongs in Europe.

Equally clear is the fact that we are living in a world where the "clash of civilizations" has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In this increasingly polarized global context between Islam and the West, Turkey is the most democratic, secular and pro-Western country in the Islamic world. It is the only Muslim member of NATO and the only Muslim country in accession negotiations with the European Union. To use the old cliché, Turkey is the bridge between the Middle East and the West. More importantly, it is an active facilitator of difficult relations between Israel and Syria and a country that wants to play a similar role between Washington and Tehran.

All these factors have significantly contributed to the symbolism of the visit. But make no mistake. An important part of President Obama's visit to Turkey was also about averting a major crisis in relations because of the Armenian genocide issue. Let's not forget that President Obama pledged several times during his electoral campaign to recognize the Armenian genocide. On April 24, in less than two weeks after his visit to Ankara, President Obama will face a critical decision. Will he refer to a "genocide" in his Armenian Remembrance Day letter? Most Turkish analysts seem to believe that he will not. I'm not so sure. When asked the question, President Obama replied by saying that he has not changed his mind on this issue. But he also pointed out that the focus should be on Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, and not on America's view of this issue.

Any presidential recognition of the Armenian genocide, or a Congressional resolution in favor of such recognition, will radically change Turkish-American relations. Ankara could retaliate in a number of ways. In its most extreme, but not necessarily most unrealistic form, scenarios include a decision by Ankara to limit the use of the Incirlik Air Base, which provides more than half of the logistic support for American troops in Iraq.

How can a crisis on this issue of genocide be averted? The answer is simple: Turkey needs to open its border with Armenia. The key development in the aftermath of President Obama's visit to Turkey may very well be Ankara's decision to do so. Such a development would provide the face-saving excuse Mr. Obama needs to refrain from honoring his campaign promise on April 24. If Turkey opens the border, the Armenian Remembrance Day letter may refer to positive developments on the ground between Armenia and Turkey. Yet, Ankara will drag its feet before opening the border and try to get America's support for Azerbaijan. It will be a very long two weeks until April 24th.