President Donald Trump, like former President Barack Obama before him, cannot praise his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, enough. Obama once listed Erdoğan as one of his top foreign friends and stated his admiration for Erdoğan was so great, he even took advice from the Turkish leader on how to raise his daughters. From Turkey itself to Syria to the Kurds, Trump’s embrace of Erdoğan has become so tight that Erdoğan appears even to craft American policy by phone with Trump or in meetings with U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack.
There is a growing dissonance, however, between Trump’s enthusiasm for supposed strong leaders such as Erdoğan and Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again.” Too often, the same authoritarians whom Trump praises interpret his admiration as a green light to target Americans on American soil.
