The United States' newly appointed ambassador to Ankara, former Sen. Jeff Flake, arrived in Turkey on Friday and will officially take office after presenting his letter of credence to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who took office on Jan. 20, 2021, announced in July that the former Republican Arizona senator would be nominated as the new U.S. ambassador to Turkey, replacing experienced diplomat David Satterfield, who has been working in Ankara since August 2019.
Flake's appointment was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Oct. 16 and the Senate General Assembly on Oct. 26 with the joint approval of Republican and Democrat members. The former senator was officially sworn in at the ceremony held on Dec. 7, with the participation of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
Nominated in mid-July, Flake was a key Republican ally for Biden during last year's race to the White House and endorsed the Democratic then-nominee after establishing himself as a Republican at odds with former President Donald Trump.
Flake served in both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his time in Congress, spanning nearly two decades. Flake served in the U.S. Senate for Arizona from 2013 to 2019 and in the U.S. House from 2001 to 2013.
Flake retired from the Senate at the end of his term in 2019, saying he was out of step with the Republican Party in the era of former President Donald Trump. He later wrote a book, "Conscience of a Conservative," that was a critique of Trump.
Ties between NATO allies Turkey and the U.S. were badly strained in 2019 over Ankara’s acquisition of the advanced S-400 air defense system, prompting Washington to remove Turkey from its F-35 Lightning II jet program. The U.S. argued that the system was incompatible with NATO systems and could be used by Russia to covertly obtain classified information on the F-35 jets. Turkey, however, insists that the S-400 would not be integrated into NATO systems and would not pose a threat to the alliance.
Back in December 2020, the U.S. decided to impose sanctions on Turkey over the purchase of Russian-made missile defense systems. Flake said in September that Turkey could face more sanctions if it purchases additional S-400 missiles from Russia.
On the other hand, Ankara maintains that the greatest challenge that Turkey-U.S. relations face is not the purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system but rather Washington’s support for the YPG, which is the Syrian branch of the PKK terror group.
The PKK is a designated terrorist organization in the U.S., Turkey and the European Union, and Washington's support for its Syrian affiliate has been a jolt to the bilateral relations with Ankara. The U.S. primarily partnered with the YPG in northeastern Syria to fight the Daesh terrorist group. On the other hand, Turkey strongly opposed the YPG's presence in northern Syria, which poses a threat to Turkey and terrorizes local people, destroying their homes and forcing them to flee. Under the pretext of fighting Daesh, the U.S. has provided military training and truckloads of military support to the YPG, despite its NATO ally's security concerns. Underlining that one cannot support one terrorist group to defeat another, Turkey carried out its own counterterrorism operations, over the course of which it has managed to drive away a significant number of terrorists from the region.
Meanwhile, David Satterfield, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Turkey who has worked extensively in the Middle East, will become the new special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced.
"Ambassador Satterfield's decades of diplomatic experience and work amidst some of the world's most challenging conflicts will be instrumental in our continued effort to promote a peaceful and prosperous Horn of Africa and to advance U.S. interests in this strategic region," Blinken said in a statement on Thursday.
He will replace Jeffrey Feltman, who quit just as he visited Ethiopia on a bid to encourage peace talks to end more than a year of war following the withdrawal of Tigrayan rebels.
Satterfield arrived in Ankara in 2019 just before then U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an abrupt withdrawal from Syria amid a Turkish cross-border operation against YPG terrorists.
Satterfield, who also has extensive experience in Egypt and Libya, was one of the few Trump appointees kept in place when President Joe Biden took office.