President Donald Trump says our “great ally” Turkey had contemplated joining the war against Israel, and, ultimately, the United States. “Maybe they didn’t do that because of me,” the president said on his state visit to Ankara, “but they could have gotten into the fight on the other side.”
The other side? The side of Hamas and Hezbollah, terrorist organizations that have murdered hundreds of Americans? The side of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Iran, the people the president was bombing, even as he offered these remarks? If Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was contemplating joining forces with Shia extremists, it’s fair to say he’s an exceptionally unreliable ally, at best.
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As it turns out, stoking the president’s hyper-egocentrism pays dividends again. Notice, for example, the unfolding logic of the following statement offered by Trump in Turkey: “I like President Erdogan. He rolled out the red carpet for me. He is a great man.”
Is he? Erdogan has taken Turkey from a secularized Islamic state to an increasingly extremist and destabilizing regional force. Turkey is one of the leading patrons of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, it arms militant groups across the Middle East, involves itself in direct military interventions in Syria and Iraq, and is constantly threatening war with Israel and Greece. Turkey consistently opposed the United States at the United Nations, undermined our anti-ISIS efforts, and weaponized migration against the West.
“Turkey has been, in many ways, much more loyal than other countries that we think would be loyal,” the president said. It is fair to point out that Western European NATO allies have been unhelpful. Too often, it’s an abusive one-way relationship. But, at the very least, as far as we know, the leaders of Germany or France never deliberated on whether or not to join the war on the side of Iran.
It would be one thing if Trump were merely buttering up the Turks, a nation that’s vital to the region and may well have helped with Operation Epic Fury in some clandestine way. But the president is lifting the economic sanctions Congress instituted when Turkey began purchasing and deploying Russian S-400 missile defense systems. Will weapons sales to Turkey come with assurances that it will no longer meddle in the affairs of Israel, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Greece, etc.?
Trump is also thinking about selling the Turks advanced F-35 fighter jets, the latest in American stealth technology, to a nation that has an increasingly close relationship with Communist China and Russia. Seems like a terrible idea. What if Erdogan joins the war against our ally one day using our technology?
If the administration ends up selling advanced weaponry to Turkey, the anti-war Democrat, blue-haired keffiyeh-wearing progressive, and Israel-obsessed podcaster are going to raise a genuine stink. Turkey has occupied the northern third of Cyprus, a real nation-state, unlike “Palestine,” since 1974. Cypriots have never sent suicide bombers to Ankara or mass murdered Turkish citizens. Yet, Erdogan has stationed tens of thousands of troops on the island, F-16 fighter jets, and air defense systems that threaten Europe.
Unlike Israel, where minorities have full rights, the Turks have spent the past century engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocides against Christians and other minorities. Even now, they are displacing Kurds, a genuine and ancient ethnicity. Turkey systematically represses Kurdish identity and language and launches military strikes against them across the Middle East.
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Yesterday, Trump noted that Benjamin Netanyahu said “rough things” about Erdogan. Well, yeah, the Turkish president calls for the destruction of Israel virtually every week. A lot of it, one suspects, is meant to distract a domestic audience from their mounting problems. The notion that Turkey would launch strikes against a nuclear state and American ally is highly unlikely. It’s difficult to tell if the president really believes it.
What is clear is that Turkey is a terrible ally. We may need it. But surely, we don’t want to empower it any more than necessary.
