If Joe Biden remains loyal to his pre-election rhetoric, he might punish Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey with a slew of sanctions for buying critical weapons systems from Russia and helping to weaken US sanctions on Iran. But Biden’s history with Erdoğan gives mixed indicators of how he might deal with Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian leader. Biden will not be able to opt for a pragmatic approach to Ankara completely free of concerns over civil liberties and human rights—Turkey’s ever-widening democracy deficit makes that impossible. But Erdoğan’s team can “buy” a new modus operandi with Washington under Biden.