TEPAV hosted Mr. Soner Cagaptay, Senior Fellow and Director of the Turkish Research Program at "the Washington Institute for Near East Policy", as a key note speaker, during the round-table meeting held at TEPAV on October 28, 2008.
During the first part of his speech, Cagaptay compared the foreign policy stand points of the two candidates, McCain and Obama. He mentioned that the general positions of the two candidates in most of the important foreign policy issues are not too different; however their methods are different. He mentioned that one of Obama's vulnerabilities lies in the fact that he advocated Iraq to be an unnecessary war, whereas he advocated the war in Afghanistan to be necessary during his election campaign. If there can not be any progress in Afghanistan after his potential presidency, then this might constitute a vulnerable area for Obama, as far as Cagaptay is concerned.
Cagaptay talked about the importance of the race factor during the election process. He also talked about the concept of "swing states" and how important these "swing states" such as Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania are in the outcome of the elections. He pointed out to the differences of the electoral system in the U.S. explaining that no matter how close the race is in one state, the winner takes all of the state votes such as Bush did when he lost the popular votes but won the electoral college during his campaign.
In the second part of his speech, Cagaptay talked about how the elections have a bearing on US foreign policy and on the US-Turkish relations. He predicted that the Turkish-American relations will remain on track, mainly due to Turkey's strategic location and its importance for the U.S. He also predicted that if McCain is chosen as the new president, due to his experience and interest on Turkey and the inexperience of his Vice President Sarah Pailin on foreign policy related issues, it will most probably be McCain who deal with Turkish related issues. On the other hand, according to Cagaptay, if Obama is chosen as the new President of the United States, he will most probably only deal with the foreign policy priorities of the U.S. such as Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. He will leave the second tier countries such as Turkey to his very experienced Vice-President Joseph Biden. In this sense, when it comes to issues related to Turkey, Cagaptay thinks that McCain and Biden's policies should be compared. After his speech, Cagaptay answered the questions coming from the audience and he evaluated the new President's potential Cyprus, Iraq, Iran and Turkey policies.