Biden names Arizona Republican Jeff Flake as his ambassador pick for Turkey

• The nomination is one of the most visible posts yet for a Republican in the Biden White House.
• Turkey was a U.S. ally in the Korean War and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1952.
• Relations between Washington and Ankara have been strained over the leadership of President Erdogan.

President Joe Biden intends to nominate former Sen. Jeff Flake as ambassador to Turkey, putting the Arizona Republican on the front lines diplomatically with a traditional ally at a time when relations have strained in an authoritarian era.

Flake’s nomination will require confirmation by the Democratic-controlled Senate, where he knows most of the members from his six years in the chamber, which ended in 2019.

The nomination is one of the most visible posts yet for a Republican in the Biden White House. Many expected Flake, of Mesa, to play some role in the administration after he enthusiastically supported Biden over former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election. 

A diplomatic post is hardly surprising for Flake, a former member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His longstanding interest in international affairs is coupled with a political outlook that called on the Trump administration to work cooperatively with America’s traditional allies.

In a statement, Flake, 58, said he was "honored and humbled by the trust" Biden has put in him with the nomination.

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"This is a pivotal post at an important time for both of our countries," his statement said. "Cheryl and I are grateful for the opportunity to serve, and eager to get to know the extraordinary people of Turkey.

"If confirmed by the Senate, I will be pleased to join a strong, experienced and capable team representing U.S. interests abroad. Having served in both the U.S. House and Senate, I understand and appreciate the role Congress plays in U.S. foreign policy, and I look forward to that partnership. I also understand the value of having America speak with one voice. Having lived overseas, I have a deep appreciation for the indispensable role that the United States plays around the world. There is no substitute for U.S. leadership."

With his nomination, Flake said the Biden administration is demonstrating "the credo that partisan politics should stop at the water’s edge. U.S. foreign policy can and should be bipartisan. That is my belief as well, and my commitment."

Turkey was a U.S. ally in the Korean War and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a bulwark against the Soviet Union in 1952. NATO has a major air base in Incirlik, Turkey.

The nation of 82 million is often cast as the bridge, physically and culturally, from the West to the Middle East. That has given the country outsized importance in U.S. diplomacy. 

Relations between Washington and Ankara have been strained during the seven-year leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who implemented far-reaching crackdowns after a 2016 coup failed to topple him.

During that time, Turkey has raised concerns in the West over its support for different armed groups in Syria and its closer ties to Russia.

In 2019, for example, Turkey purchased Russian anti-aircraft systems despite heavy objections from the U.S. at the time. Turkey, as a member of NATO, helped block the defense of Poland and other nations in the Baltic region in a move viewed favorably by the Kremlin.

Turkey has had chronically poor relations with Israel, America’s most vital ally in the Middle East. It also has longstanding problems with Iraqi Kurds, a faction long considered helpful to U.S. interests in Iraq, and an uneasy peace with Armenia. 

In April, Biden recognized what he formally termed the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire that included present-day Turkey. By recognizing the deaths of an estimated 1 million Armenians, Biden made clearer the difficult relations between Washington and Ankara.

Moving the nations onto better footing could fall in part to Flake, who has long shown an interest in international matters and a desire to help engineer dramatic changes in global matters.

Flake, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, earned his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University in international relations. 

Flake spent his Mormon mission in South Africa and Zimbabwe. 

He served as the executive director of the Foundation for Democracy in Namibia and speaks Afrikaans. 

He chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s special panel on Africa. In one of his many challenges to Trump, in 2018 Flake urged a more deliberative foreign policy.

“I think it’s important for the president, if he’s going to conduct foreign policy by tweet, to be more careful and not to base something on one news report,” Flake said on the Senate floor about reports of democratic backsliding in South Africa. “These things matter.” 

Tangling with Trump

Flake, the father of five children, established himself as a libertarian-leaning conservative in Congress. He served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before winning election to the U.S. Senate in 2012. 

He served in the Senate for one term, before announcing ahead of the 2018 election he would not seek a second term, citing the nastiness and partisanship that permeated Washington under Trump. 

Ahead of that decision, Flake challenged Trump’s honesty, policies, and tone and encouraged Republican colleagues to do the same when needed. 

In crossing the president, Flake was smeared on the right as a Republican-In-Name-Only, or RINO, isolating him from his party and obliterating any viable path to winning a GOP primary election in 2018. He briefly considered challenging Trump for the party’s nomination in 2020 but ultimately decided against it.

Something of a political maverick, Flake routinely angered fellow Republicans by highlighting their spending of taxpayer money on parochial priorities. 

While in the House, Flake’s office ridiculed questionable pork projects with a series of “Egregious Earmark of the Week” news releases. His efforts were credited with helping lead to a moratorium on earmarks.

On Capitol Hill, Flake also was a leading conservative proponent for comprehensive immigration reform. Shortly after winning a Senate seat, he joined the bipartisan “Gang of Eight,” which in 2013 collaborated on a plan to increase border security and establish a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country at the time. Those efforts were unsuccessful. 

In 2017, he was on the baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game, a charity contest between Democrats and Republicans, when a gunman opened fire. He took cover in the dugout, and after the bullets stopped, he ran onto the field to help Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, applying pressure to his gunshot wound. 

After leaving the Senate, Flake joined Arizona State University as a distinguished fellow, where he visited classrooms, held seminars and lectures, and met with students. He is also a distinguished fellow at the Sorensen Center for Moral and Ethical Leadership at BYU.

He serves on the Senior Advisory Committee at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

Republic national politics editor Dan Nowicki contributed to this report.

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