On Feb. 19, US President Barack Obama had his first conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan since the latter's government came under a corruption and bribery investigation two months ago. While Erdogan framed this graft probe as an “attempted coup” by the US-based Sunni religious leader Fethullah Gulen, he also covertly blamed the United States to be the mastermind of this plot against his government. He even raised the possibility of expelling Francis Ricciardone, the US ambassador to Turkey, soon after the scandal broke out.

A lot has happened since Obama listed Erdogan in 2012 as one of his top five close friends among world leaders. The White House readout of the Obama-Erdogan telephone conversation sounded as if the Obama administration was listing its disappointment with Erdogan one sentence after another. “The President affirmed the value he places on a strong, mutually respectful bilateral relationship with the Republic of Turkey and expressed his view that Turkey can demonstrate leadership in the world through positive engagement,” it read, allowing analysts to speculate as to why there was any need to openly spell out “positive engagement.”

Umit Ozdag, the head of 21st Century Turkey, an Ankara based think tank, told Al-Monitor, “At its core, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has a very different ideological essence from the Western system. They gather in protest in front of the US Embassy, they provoke the civil war in Egypt or support the Salafi groups in Syria. It is to say, the Turkey-US relationship can be derailed anytime, despite whatever concession Erdogan may give to the US [for staying in power].”

The way the US-Turkey relationship is consumed in local politics, however, is far from positive. On Feb. 18, for example, Erdogan talked about the recently leaked audio recording of Gulen and an unknown individual who basically asked permission for framing the United States to be behind the illegally placed listening device found at the prime minister’s office, similar to the tapping into German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s communications by the United States. Like it or not, many in Ankara’s beltway see it as only fair that Erdogan questions whether the United States is behind the graft probe, as long as Gulen continues to stay in the United States when nothing legally or physically prevents him from returning to Turkey.