If all goes to plan, Turkey will soon have a new ambassador in Washington.

Murat Mercan, a founding member of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), is poised to become the first ever political appointee to hold the most coveted position in Turkish diplomacy.

Mercan’s appointment to Washington came as a big surprise. Relations between Washington and Ankara are at an all-time low over a range of seemingly intractable issues. But none has proved as toxic as Turkey’s acquisition of Russian S-400 missiles. The fallout has been huge. Turkey has been kicked out of the consortium to produce 5th generation F-35 fighter jets, which the S-400s are designed to shoot down. Its state defense procurement agency was slapped with sanctions by the previous US administration. It was therefore expected that Turkey would send an experienced career diplomat to replace the current ambassador, Serdar Kilic, who has been in Washington since 2014. The Turkish ambassador to London, Umit Yalcin, was together with Mercan on a short list drawn up by Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, well-placed sources told Al-Monitor. But Erdogan will have had the final say. So why did he plump for Mercan? And what can Mercan realistically achieve?

The conventional wisdom is that Erdogan wanted someone he fully trusted, a like-minded Islamic conservative who shared his worldview but also had experience of the United States and of foreign relations, too. Moreover, a political appointee with a direct line to the Turkish leader might carry added weight, or so the thinking goes.