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Government

Jan. 2, 2025

How Turkey and Biden pulled off a hostage exchange that went largely unnoticed

Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. and Turkey, both seasoned practitioners of "back channel" diplomacy, achieved a remarkable diplomatic feat with the release of American hostages held in Russia. Yet, it seems the world remains largely unaware--or indifferent--to the achievement.

Omer Ilter

LLM University of Southern California Gould School of Law, is a lawyer and member of the Istanbul Bar of Turkey.

As a newly admitted to California lawyer, having been born in Turkey and practiced law in Istanbul for almost three years before moving to the United States, I can't help but draw comparisons between my home country and the U.S. This past summer, U.S. President Joe Biden and the government of Turkey, both longstanding experts of "back channel" international diplomacy, pulled off a diplomatic marvel. American hostages held in Russia for several years on trumped-up charges were released. All landed on American soil on Aug.1, 2024, though many around the world appear to not know, or possibly care. 

The New York Times

Three Americans, one held since 2018, were part of a 24-person international prisoner swap in which Russia released 16 hostage-prisoners, and other countries released eight Russians who were repatriated to Russia. Some of the American's include:

(a)Paul Whelan, a former marine who visited Moscow in 2018 for a wedding where he was arrested by Russian officials and charged with espionage; he was sentenced by Russian authorities to 16 years of hard labor.

(b)Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter working in Moscow, was arrested on the charge of espionage in March 2023 while working in Moscow; he too was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment.

(c)Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist from Radio Free Europe, sentenced to six and a half years' imprisonment for "spreading false information" within her news coverage.

Russia's prize-returnee was state-sponsored assassin Vadim "hitman" Krasikov, who had been convicted in Germany for the Berlin murder of 40-year-old Russian dissident Zelimkhan "Tornike" Khangoshvili.

The Biden administration successfully negotiated the release of three American hostages and 13 others held captive in Russia

Biden's state department, with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the helm, conducted nuanced orchestral diplomacy. It was reminiscent of a modern-day kidney transplant swap, where on the same day and at the same time a chain of people pre-tested for compatibility .

 Sometimes, living kidney donors are not compatible with their intended recipients, so the donor's kidney is matched with someone else, while the intended recipient receives a kidney from another donor. Imagine the level of planning, precision, and coordination required for such a process. A similar level of skill and strategy was demonstrated in the Biden administration's August prisoner swap.

Having taken international relations and public international law courses at Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey, I know what it took for the U.S. to pull off this diplomatic marvel.

Few of my friends in America know what President Biden accomplished and have no idea that it was my home country of Turkey that played a crucial part in this successful transfer. Instead, almost immediately after the Americans, one at a time descended from the military plane into the embrace of the president, vice president, and then family members, the story was gone from the newspapers and news aggregators. And Turkey? Not a peep about its part in the international negotiations.

Ruminating on the August 2024 hostage prisoner swap has caused me to question why both Biden and Turkey officials are rarely lauded for international and domestic accomplishments. Not only did the mainstream media fail to acknowledge that Turkey played a significant part in the prisoner exchange, which was conducted in Turkey's capital city Ankara,  but that it was the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War.

Biden, who finessed this feat and who is also a legislative master corralling bi-partisanship by signing more than 400 bills in his single term in office, is often depicted as doddering and fatigued. Turkey, a developed country that straddles Western and Eastern cultures with a majority Muslim population, is rarely mentioned in mainstream news. Plus, few news outlets refer to my country by its real and preferred name: it is, Türkiye (pronounced Tur-kee-yeah), which at least the United Nations recognized and started to use in 2023.

This article is designed to highlight the similarities in treatment by the media of Biden and the country of Turkey (emphasis on the word "country"); I share my musings here with my American and international colleagues.

Biden's unsung successes

Now, days away from the transfer of governmental power on Jan. 20, there still seems to be little coverage of Biden's activities. This is nothing new. In addition to the diplomatic success of the Russia hostage swap, there are at least five legislative accomplishments that make me (a foreigner on this soil) appreciate his statesmanship.

Biden's achievements in strengthening the U.S. economy

During Biden's presidency, American unemployment rates significantly decreased and inflation eased. These economic achievements resulted from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (cited below), and three pieces of legislation:

(a) The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has been key to installing high-speed internet, clean water, roads, bridges and transportation improvements, installation of electronic vehicle chargers, and other national infrastructure improvements.

(b) The Inflation Reduction Act resulted in the federal government (Medicare) being able to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma, and it capped insulin costs for diabetics at $35, resulting in millions of savings for Medicare beneficiaries. The Act also gave tax credits to those who bought electric cars.

(c) The CHIPS and Science Act was designed to encourage less reliance on foreign tech in semi-conductor (CHIP) creation. The Act, which provided billions in grants and incentives to US companies and supply chain partners, has resulted in a 15-fold increase in U.S. tech manufacturing. According to American Enterprise Institute, by 2030, the U.S. will probably produce around 20% of the world's most advanced chips, up from zero.

These three pieces of White House-driven legislation have contributed to improvements in America's economy. The stock market is currently experiencing sustained gains, yet Biden receives little to no credit for this legislative trifecta and the country's ongoing economic progress.

Biden's response to Covid-19 increased access to vaccines and offered financial support to individuals and businesses in need

It's hard to forget the devastation of the Covid-19 virus, which starting in 2020 resulted in more than seven million deaths internationally, and1.2 million in the U.S.

During that time, Biden expanded people's access to vaccines - some 500 million doses applied initially in his first year. The vaccines did not just go to the rich; the Biden administration stressed "equity in distribution," providing it to poor and diverse communities. Biden's efforts went beyond America's borders. The U.S. government partnered with the  World Health Organization and the U.S. supplied the distribution of over a billion vaccine doses in far flung places in the world, including Turkey's neighboring countries like Iraq, Georgia, and Armenia.

Plus, Biden's American [Covid] Rescue Plan legislation provided money to individuals and business owners who lost customers due to Covid's collateral consequences.

Additionally, Biden's Rescue Plan allocated funds to community organizations for violence prevention and ensured continued support for police departments during Covid, while directing billions towards retaining, hiring, and training officers. These efforts have contributed to a projected 16% decrease in America's murder rate by the end of 2024, the largest drop in a single year since national violence statistics were first collected in 1960. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, "Biden will leave office on the heels of the largest single-year decline in the murder rate on record."

Biden's crucial role in reduction of gun violence

Shortly after the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas resulted in the deaths of 19 school children and two of their teachers, which followed on the heels of a mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York supermarket where ten people were killed, Biden signed into law a historic piece of bipartisan gun safety legislation.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 expands federal background checks to include 18- to 21-year-olds, and incentivizes states to pass red flag laws so that courts can be petitioned to keep guns out of the hands of those who intend violence to include unmarried partners in the definition of domestic violence.

The White House also created the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which is designed to implement the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to make schools, churches, grocery stores, and communities safer.

On Sept. 26, 2024, Biden also announced an executive order to combat emerging firearms threats and improve school-based active-shooter drills to foster governmental institutions to take action against gun violence. The executive order directed the secretary of education and the secretary of homeland security to publish information about school-based shooter drills for K-12 schools and higher education institutions.

The U.S. military is benefiting from increased domestic drone production, thanks to this administration

In August of 2023, Biden's Department of Defense (DOD) made a change as to how warfare would be conducted. DOD officials announced that observing the Russia-Ukraine conflict has caused the U.S., where applicable, to use drones (referred to as uncrewed systems or autonomous systems) to lessen the degree of risk to human troops.

The Replicator initiative says DOD intends to deploy these "systems" en masse, "allowing the U.S. military to disperse combat power" over several platforms which will "make it harder for an adversary to target and neutralize U.S. capabilities" and to do so in a cost-effective way by using drones designed to supplement, but not replace, traditional tools of war such as aircraft carriers.

In this way, the U.S. will emulate Turkey in that Turkey produced 68,647 drones so far through September 2024, with a 12.5% increase compared to the same period last year.

The Biden drone production policies have improved the U.S. defense system which has and will continue to reduce human casualties. The use of drones, as Ukraine has proven, has strengthened Ukraine's defense (even though Ukraine uses mostly drones imported from Turkey).

Biden's effective advancement on renewable energy

This effort is exemplified by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management's publication of the Permitting Action Plan on May 1, 2024, focusing on Rights-of-Way, Leasing, and Operations for Renewable Energy.

The Biden administration has been advancing renewable energy through its green agenda, which includes accelerating and streamlining environmental reviews of the nation's infrastructure projects. This effort is exemplified by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management's publication of the Permitting Action Plan on May 1, 2024, focusing on the  Rights-of-Way, Leasing, and Operations for Renewable Energy .

It has also emphasized renewable energy (solar and wind) on federal lands overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. This will reduce energy costs to consumers by 80%. Some of that has impacted California, with the federal government's new solar energy projects designed to supply renewable (clean) energy to 139,000 homes here. Originally, the administration's goal was to add 25 gigawatts of new energy sources by 2025. The Biden measures have surpassed this by 16%, as of April 2024, with 29 gigawatts.

The accomplishments listed above--such as strengthening the U.S. economy, overcoming the challenges of Covid, reducing gun violence, taking steps to minimize combatant deaths in warfare, and promoting clean energy--receive little to no sustained coverage in our 24/7 news cycle.

My American friends know little about the country of Turkey or the part it played in last summer's hostage swap. I have not met any American who knows that Turkey's first kingdom was founded in Central Asia in 1200 B.C., or that my forefathers and mothers lived under Chinese rule for nearly 50 years during the Gokturk state, or that this is still the only period where Turks lived under a sovereign and liberated themselves in the year of 682. The liberator was Kutluk Khan. He would later be known as Ilteris, meaning the person who establishes and organizes a state. My last name Ilter is a derivation of the name of one of our country's first great statesmen.

Also,  few of my American friends know that during the Ottoman Empire, in the region that would become modern Turkey, diplomatic aims resulted in a change in how the shipping world did business. The Ottoman Empire was instrumental in creating the Suez Canal, a man-made sailing channel that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. Before the Suez Canal, ships seeking to go to the Arabian Sea would have to travel around the tip of the bottom of Africa. The canal shaved over 5,000 miles off the travel between Britannia and the Arabian Peninsula.

And if you visit Turkey now, you can see the lovingly restored palace, the Beykoz Medicidiye Kasri (see photograph below), situated on the shores of the Bosporus River. The Beaux Art construction facing the sea was a gift from Egypt's governor in 1854 to the Ottoman Sultan for the creation of the canal and the concomitant increase in commerce and wealth to Egypt.

Shutterstock

It's not just the historical Turkish region that remains unknown to the general public in the United States. Few are aware of the strategic position Turkey holds in both the Middle East and Europe.

What is known as modern Turkey is over 100 years old, having been founded in 1923 by the man who would come to be known as "Ataturk" (the father of Turks). His mission was to modernize Turkey, and the Arabic written in Turkey from then on would be with Roman letters.

Ataturk - like America's first president George Washington, had no biological children. He became the father of Turkey like Washington became the father of this nation. Peace and plurality were his hallmarks. In 1931, Ataturk said, "Peace at home, peace in the world."

Ataturk actively engaged in and signed peace treaties and urged other countries to participate in preserving world peace. In 1934, Turkey signed the Pact of Balkan Entente with Balkan countries Greece, Yugoslavia, and Romania.

In 1937 and in the same vein, Turkey signed a non-aggression pact called the Treaty of Saadabad with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran to preserve peace in the Middle East.

Turkey's national security is shaped by two primary aspects: its geography and longstanding ties with neighboring countries. Promoting peace among nations is Turkey's calling card, and it has called for avoiding wars or direct conflicts. In 1952, Turkey became the first and only NATO ("North Atlantic Treaty Organization") member having a Muslim-majority population.

In 1950, Turkey sent 15,000 troops to assist South Korea during the Korean War where General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the UN Coalition Forces, said, "The Turks are the hero of heroes," helping to ensure Turkey's NATO membership  in 1952. Turkey also assisted NATO in many operations during the Cold War, such as protecting the southeastern border of the Alliance.

Turkey's role in global affairs since the start of Russia's war on Ukraine in 2022

During the Russia-Ukraine war, Turkey played the role of the unsung international mediator.

In September 2022, seven months into the war, Turkey brokered a "grain deal" between Russia and Ukraine, ensuring the release of wheat and grain exports from the Black Sea to global markets. The agreement facilitated the export of over 4 billion pounds (more than 2 million metric tons) of agricultural goods. While maintaining economic ties with Russia, Turkey has supported Ukraine by supplying military drones.

Turkey's relations with both sides enabled Turkey to bring the warring parties together to discuss a ceasefire in March 2022. Even though no ceasefire occurred, Turkey was able to bring the parties to the negotiation table.

Giving credit where it's due

Modern Turkey, and the people who have inhabited the region now known as Turkey, have long had a strong diplomatic presence. The events in Ankara last summer, when Russian-held hostages were returned, demonstrate that American diplomats rightly view Turkey as a key player in international negotiations. As Biden steps off the world stage, Turkey's role as a global mediator continues to rise.

Through this article, I hope my American friends gain a deeper understanding of my country and its significant role in diplomatic affairs. I also hope they recognize the many domestic and international successes of a president named Joe.

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