Baseball bat: A foreign policy instrument for Barack Obama as he carries it while he talks-Part 1
In foreign policy, insinuation plays an important role. Every country that wants to communicate a certain message to its rival, there are more than one way to do so. The best one in the diplomatic circles is relying on ambiguous use of the language or making
such expressions while speaking that can be interpreted in many ways.
The purpose of this can be conveying the message to the one for whom it is intended while keeping the rest of the countries guessing.
There is no such thing like honest expressions of contentions on various issues because the whole world consists of multitude of countries and each maintains a relationship with you.
Being specific in words may lead to the creation of enemies where as being general and ambivalent will ensure the positive relations with most of the countries. The latter also ensures that the real enemy understands what was being communicated from your
part.
The President of the United States, Barack Obama makes a pose while sitting in the White House where he grabs a baseball bat firmly as he talked to the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
His posture has caused a huge hue and cry coming off from the opposition parties of Turkey that have taken the recently issued picture of Barack Obama while holding a baseball bat as a signal that he was issuing commands to the Turkish Prime Minister.
While the opposition parties always look for ways to malign the incumbents, they are not entirely wrong in questioning the photo. Obama held the baseball bat tightly and talked as if countries like Turkey or the ones forming part of the Middle East feel
that the bat signals the president’s intention to coercing them into doing something, they have the reasons to think this way.
With Turkey’s Government is playing an important role in making sure that the Syrian president is penalised for masterminding the massacres of innocent people, the use of the baseball bat by the president may be perceived as the issuance of orders from his
part to the Turkish Prime Minister.
The opposition parties may start spreading the rumour that all Turkey is doing with regard to its policy toward Middle East is at the behest of the American Government.
The public which runs on speculations will then be ready to criticise the Government even if its actions were entirely motivated by genuine interests in the region as opposed to doing anything to appease the Americans.
Metin Lutfi Baydar, who belongs to an opposition party in Turkey, has come up with a bluntest of the interpretations. He has even gone on to cast a shadow of doubt on the integrity of Erdogan, who is widely known in the world as one who is least pliable
especially when it comes to foreign policy.
"The photo reveals from whom our prime minister receives orders to rule the country," said Metin Lutfi Baydar.
In order to ascertain that the matter is resolved before it turns into a cause of grave concern for the Government of Turkey, the White House has nullified the contention of the opposition parties by issuing a statement.
"We released the photo with only one purpose in mind, to highlight the President's continuing close relationship with Prime Minister Erdogan and draw attention to the important conversation they had about the worsening situation in Syria. The President values
his friendship and close partnership with Prime Minister Erdogan on a range of important issues on which the United States cooperates with Turkey," the statement said.
The statement clearly reflects that there is not even a remote link with what has now been concocted from the picture by the opposition parties.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
Continued in Part 2
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