Jeff Flake, the former senator from Arizona, talks about what's going on in Turkey

Ambassador Jeff Flake is near, but not on the political hot seat for a welcome change.

Based in Ankara, Turkey, Arizona’s former Republican U.S. senator has been the Biden administration’s top diplomat in a nation that in his short time there has faced a pressure-packed presidential election, a major natural disaster and the push and pull of a state with interests on both sides of the war in Ukraine.

About 21 months into his post, Flake recognizes social and political complexities in Turkey, the nation that straddles Europe and the Middle East and remains a key U.S. ally capable of great assistance and frustration.

“When the White House asked if I would consider an ambassadorial post, I said, ‘Only if it's something really consequential,’” Flake told The Arizona Republic last week in an interview. “They overshot the mark quite a bit.”

And as Flake heads the U.S. Embassy in Turkey, he has kept tabs on U.S. politics in Arizona and elsewhere. He was unsurprised Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., quit the Democratic Party last year and was impressed that Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, held Republicans to account as he announced, as Flake did in 2017, he would not seek a second term.

Flake arrived in Turkey in January 2022, about six weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. Since then, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has walked a delicate line with Russia and the West, forcing both to accept a blurred role for Turkey.

Erdogan has relied on Russian aid to build a nuclear power plant, bought its missile-defense hardware, and held friendly meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin as recently as this month.

This summer Erdogan met with President Joe Biden and dropped Turkey’s objections to allowing Sweden to join NATO in a move to check Russia. And Turkey played a key role brokering a short-lived deal with Russia and Ukraine last year to export Ukrainian grain to Africa.

“Turkey sees themselves as an independent country with its own foreign policy,” Flake said. “Sometimes that’s frustrating to the West, but it’s appreciated when we have a country that can negotiate. And when the war reaches a phase where negotiations may be needed, then I’m sure the West will rely on people like Erdogan.”

Flake praised Turkey’s sales of military drones to Ukraine and its early decision to seal off the Black Sea, preventing additional Russian warships from threatening Ukraine.

“They’ve also limited military overflights from Russian aircraft, which made it far more difficult for the (mercenary) forces to come from Syria or from Libya or elsewhere, but also Russian assets from elsewhere. It’s made it complicated,” Flake said. “But, like most of Europe, Turkey has had economic relationships with Russia that are tough to break, particularly in the energy sphere.”

Flake’s own relations with Erdogan seem mixed.

In May, Erdogan won another five-year presidential term even as some in the West not-so-secretly wished for his opponent to end Turkey’s drift into more authoritarian rule. Ahead of the election, Flake met with Erdogan’s challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

An indignant Erdogan made clear he viewed the meeting as crossing a diplomatic line.

“Joe Biden spoke, and now you see what his ambassador here does,” Erdogan reportedly said at an event a month before the election. “It is a shame. You are an ambassador, and you have to know how to act. You should be engaged with the president. I wonder if he will be ashamed to ask for an appointment at my office. But I tell him now. Our doors are closed to him from now on because he does not know his place. You should know how an ambassador should act.”

Flake brushed aside Erdogan’s anger.

“From time immemorial, American ambassadors have met with opposition figures, and from time immemorial incumbent governments have complained about it,” Flake said.

Beyond that specific incident, Erdogan has had a longstanding problem with U.S. support for ethnic Kurds, who maintain a sizable presence in southeastern Turkey and play a key role in wider U.S. interests in the Middle East.

“What most Americans see in terms of the Kurds is the assistance that some Kurdish militias and others have provided outside of Turkey in our war against ISIS,” he said. “The Turkish government does not like our partnership with the SDF (the Syrian Democratic Forces). These are Kurds in Syria. We feel that Turkey is part of this global coalition against ISIS, and they’ve been helpful in that regard. But that is one point of friction.”

Erdogan met with Flake last week in a sign that both countries see the need to move past the Turkish campaign.

Erdogan won another term even as that country has seen 80% annual inflation and in February suffered a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on its southern border that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey.

The government’s response drew mixed appraisals from Turks, Flake said. The U.S. “responded in a big way” with help coming quickly from its air base in Incirlik, Turkey, and there was other foreign fallout from the quake.

“One thing the earthquake did was soften the relationship between Turkey and Greece,” Flake said, referring to tensions between those nations dating to at least the 1950s, principally over the island of Cyprus.

“Greece came in early on with search-and-rescue teams and then additional aid to the Aegean, which is almost always prone to provocations and overflights and complaints about sovereignty of islands and whatnot,” Flake said. “It’s been extremely peaceful. We even had the foreign minister of Greece here in Ankara just two weeks ago standing with the foreign minister of Turkey. It was quite something.”

But earlier this year, it may have seemed unlikely that Erdogan could win a fair election under the circumstances.

“I can tell you on Election Day the opposition felt that they had the opportunity to win,” Flake said.

In the 100^th year of modern Turkey, people there have democracy and freedom “ingrained in their DNA. They take it seriously,” Flake said.

“I thought it was notable that after the election, when there were a couple of groups outside of the country or on social media were saying that the vote on Election Day had to have been rigged, you had members of the main opposition party that lost saying, ‘Don’t disparage our election process.’ I thought maybe some of us could learn from that.”

It was an unsubtle reminder of what didn’t happen in the U.S. after the 2020 election, when Biden defeated former President Donald Trump, with Arizona proving the closest vote in the country.

Flake may have helped play a hand in that by announcing his support, along with other Republicans, for Biden. Biden repaid the favor with the diplomatic assignment.

Domestic politics are a subject Flake is eager to avoid these days.

He ended his own career in 2017 when, repeatedly taunted by Trump and facing polling showing no plausible path to winning the GOP nomination in 2018, Flake said he would not seek another term.

Sinema wound up winning his seat for the Democrats.

Asked about Sinema’s own surprise announcement — that she quit the Democratic Party and is now an independent — Flake largely passed.

“I sympathize with the position she’s been in very, very much,” he said. “I sympathize with her and with Mitt Romney. That brought back a bit of déja vu with his announcement. But one of the nice things about being ambassador here is I’m 7,000 miles away from Arizona politics, and I don’t have to comment on it.”

Last week, Romney announced his impending retirement, which comes ahead of a book expected to identify Republicans who have been privately critical of Trump, even as they supported him in public. Flake said he would not follow suit.

“I still have a lot of contact with my former colleagues, and I value those ties and friendships and try to make use of them,” Flake said. “But I’m a big fan of Mitt Romney. We exchanged texts (last week) and I feel for him.”

The election denialism at the heart of Trump’s continued political presence is something that Flake sees as undermining the efforts of the nation’s diplomats.

“You know, we have been the shining city on the hill and we should remain to be,” Flake said, evoking a favorite political metaphor of his.

“I think when we question legitimate elections just for political reasons it’s a blemish on our record, and it hurts us internationally. It hurts us when we try to push and nudge and lead others toward a more democratic future. They can point at us and look at the sacking of the Capitol and people not willing to accept free and fair elections years out. It’s a huge hindrance for us in our mission to export our values of liberal democracy abroad.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Jeff Flake sees Turkey providing test of Ukraine war, U.S. values