President Barack Obama to use Turkey visit to court Muslims

President Barack Obama will seek to extend America's key alliances beyond Europe by using a visit next month to Turkey, which is ruled by a moderate Islamic party, to court the Muslim world.

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 7:47PM GMT 08 Mar 2009

Mr Obama is expected to travel to Turkey after the G20 global summit in London on April 2nd before making subsequent stops in France, Germany and the Czech Republic. He pledged during his election campaign to make a speech from a major Muslim country in his first 100 days in office.

The visit could add lustre to a trip that might well hampered by the difficulties of achieving any concrete progress in London on the type of global financial regulation championed by Gordon Brown during his Washington visit last week but viewed with suspicion by Congress and some in the White House.

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Mr Obama, who did not repeat Mr Brown's cherished "global new deal" phrase, is heavily focused on forging support for domestic financial measures while Britain, France and Germany have yet to reach a common position on what kind of new financial regulations are needed.

Mr Brown called on the US government to deal with Europe as its foremost partner in world affairs, telling the US Congress: "You now have the most pro- American European leadership in living memory. It's a leadership that wants to cooperate more closely together in order to cooperate more closely with you. There is no old Europe, no new Europe; there is only your friend Europe."

But the prominence of Turkey on his travel agenda underlines President Obama's broader set of policy priorities. Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation since 1952 but not the European Union, opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and refused to allow American ground forces use Turkish soil as a launching pad.

Now, Mr Obama hopes that Turkey could help change American fortunes in Afghanistan, perhaps by permitting an expanded role for the US airbase at Incirlik as a transit stop for some of the 15,000 troops and 500 tons of cargo going in and out of Afghanistan each month.

Turkey wants the US to put more focus on expanding and improving the Afghan security forces and on pushing the Afghan government to deal with elements of the Islamic insurgency - an aspiration Mr Obama echoed last week when he suggested that "moderate" elements of the Taliban could be negotiated with.

Preparing the ground for Mr Obama's Turkey visit, Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, announced the plan after a meeting with Turkish leaders in Ankara. "We share a commitment to democracy, a secular constitution, respect for religious freedom and belief and in free market and a sense of global responsibility," she said.

In an interview in December, Mr Obama said: "We've got a unique opportunity to reboot America's image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular. So we need to take advantage of that."

It remains unclear, however, whether Mr Obama use Turkey to the speech he promised to deliver in a major Muslim country. White House officials have indicated he will not but the symbolism of backdrop of the Bosphorus , which divides Europe from Asia, could prove difficult to resist.