President Obama, in an interview in January 2012, named Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan among the five world leaders with whom he enjoys the most trusted and effective relations on the global scene. But close observers of US foreign policy may have noticed a growing gap between the intensity of high-level consultations between American and Turkish policymakers on issues from Iran and Syria to Afghanistan, and the Arab uprisings and lagging perceptions of Turkey on the Hill and beyond.

A new report by a task force convened by the Council on Foreign Relations aims to correct that, arguing it’s time for an upgrade of US-Turkish relations, one that recognizes Turkey’s growing importance on the world scene.

“Turkey has changed dramatically over the last ten years. It's really a new Turkey, and we need to see and think about it differently as a consequence,” says Steven Hadley, the former Bush administration national-security advisor and co-chair of the CFR Turkey task force with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in an interview with CFR Tuesday [May 8, 2012]. “That means there needs to be a new relationship between the United States and Turkey.”

“What we are talking about is … making Turkey — and ultimately the trajectory of US-Turkey relations — on the same level as the Brits and the French and the Germans,” Steven Cook, a member of the Task Force and Middle East expert with CFR, told Al-Monitor in an interview Tuesday, May 8.