Turkish correspondent shares harrowing experiences, discusses US-Turkish relations with Club's ICC

Reporter Amberin Zaman, on one of her first assignments, arrived in a small mountain village in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Armenia just seized by Azerbaijani forces, in the dead of winter 1991. There she encountered a woman and her young son, staring at her imploringly. A hostage, she soon realized.

Before she could investigate, however, a drunk Azerbaijani commander “decided he wanted to have his way with me," she recalled. 

Stalling for time, Zaman challenged the man to a game of backgammon. Zaman summoned all her skill, saying a silent prayer each time she rolled the dice and, in the end, won the game. Humiliated in front of his men, the commander ordered her to leave the village. 

Even as she fled, Zaman kept thinking of the woman whom she later learned had been raped by the soldiers. Although it was “heartbreaking,” Zaman said it added resolve to her work.

"I feel that the best thing I can do is to just keep doing my job and not develop a persona where I'm becoming the victim, too,” said Zaman, who later learned the woman was released soon after her visit. Reading that, she said, was “one of the happiest moments of my life as a journalist."

Zaman, who now writes for Al-Monitor, shared the lessons of 30 years a foreign correspondent at a virtual event March 22 organized by the National Press Club's International Correspondents Committee and moderated by NPC Vice President Jen Judson.

She has reported on the Middle East and Africa for The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Economist, among others. Along the way, she has covered some of the region’s biggest stories and built-up intricate knowledge of the complex, dynamic region.

Relations between the United States and Turkey have shifted since President Biden took office, she said. Former President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan "admired each other's autocratic, populist, polarizing, characteristics, and Turkey managed to get quite a bit out of the Trump administration,” she said.

She described Turkey's foreign policy as more “muscular,”  providing military assistance to the Libyan government, actively supporting Azerbaijan in its war with Armenia, and attacking Kurdish positions in Iraq and Syria. 

Since Biden has taken office, she said, "the mood in the Congress and on the Hill is incredibly negative,” toward Turkey. She outlined several factors underlying the frayed relations, including Turkey’s purchase of S400 missiles from Russia, charges in a New York court of laundering money for Iran, and U.S. protection of a Turkish cleric and Erdogan critic in Pennsylvania.

A perennial sore spot is the U.S. relationship with Kurdish fighters in Northern Syria, she said.  Kurds have fought with Turkey since 1978 for an independent Kurdistan or to secure more autonomy for ethnic Kurds within Turkey.

“When you're sitting in Ankara, and you see these guys who were fighting you [that are] now partnering with the U.S., getting weapons from the U.S., getting training from the U.S. – your erstwhile ally – of course, that kind of freaks you out,” she explained. 

The Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to broker a deal betweenTurkey and the Kurds. Zaman has little confidence the Biden administration will succeed as Erdogan has taken an increasingly hard line toward Turkey's Kurdish population.

If relations deteriorate further and Turkey attacks Kurdish forces, she foresees trouble for U.S./Turkey relations. “Unfortunately, all indications are that President Erdogan will do whatever he can to remain in power," Zaman said. "Every red line we said he couldn’t cross, he has crossed.”