Amusing, the roil of Erdogan's problems in Turkey - and there are many salient things one could say about these problems - how it's more proof that Islamism [for that has always been Erdogan's desired end here] is nothing more than autocracy hiding behind a faux democracy and thus liable to all the issues of corruption and abuse that plague authoritarian regimes - or how Erdogan's machinations are yet more reason to question the sanity of trusting Turkey under his rule with strategically sensitive info and technology - to wit, as said before, there's no way I'm letting Erdogan get his hands on any F-35s or advanced missile defense tech or any number of other sensitive things - Turkey under a man like him does not belong in NATO and should flat out not be trusted with anything of strategic import.
But to me the most amusing aspect of this dust up is how it further stains the already badly blemished facade of Obama the wise and thoughtful one - for coming into office Obama lavished much praise on Erdogan and made it clear he thought him a kindred spirit [which I guess is true if one thinks of them both as falsely enlightened autocrats carting about morbidly obese egos that leave them highly intolerant of dissent]. It's startling - far as I can tell, I don't believe there's a single thing Obama has gotten right in the foreign policy realm - true, some of his mistakes were deliberate in sense he didn't see them as mistakes: his ideological presumptions demand a demonizing and consequent emasculation of American power and that is what he's done - but a lot of what's gone on here is just a result of incompetence, ignorance, strategic muddle and naive pandering utterly unmoored from reality - his misbegotten love for Erdogan becomes one more sad feather in that unspeakably ugly cap.
[and let's not forget Obama/Kerry forcing Netanyahu into 'apologising' to Erdogan viz the Gaza flotilla debacle - at the time I suggested Bibi probably agreed to swallow that most bitter of pills because he figured eventually the truth about Erdogan would come out and at that point Obama would look the fool and Israel could dangle this misguided foolishness in the faces of Kerry et al when they tried to preach to Israel about how to proceed given the unhelpful proclivities of their enemies]
But to me the most amusing aspect of this dust up is how it further stains the already badly blemished facade of Obama the wise and thoughtful one - for coming into office Obama lavished much praise on Erdogan and made it clear he thought him a kindred spirit [which I guess is true if one thinks of them both as falsely enlightened autocrats carting about morbidly obese egos that leave them highly intolerant of dissent]. It's startling - far as I can tell, I don't believe there's a single thing Obama has gotten right in the foreign policy realm - true, some of his mistakes were deliberate in sense he didn't see them as mistakes: his ideological presumptions demand a demonizing and consequent emasculation of American power and that is what he's done - but a lot of what's gone on here is just a result of incompetence, ignorance, strategic muddle and naive pandering utterly unmoored from reality - his misbegotten love for Erdogan becomes one more sad feather in that unspeakably ugly cap.
[and let's not forget Obama/Kerry forcing Netanyahu into 'apologising' to Erdogan viz the Gaza flotilla debacle - at the time I suggested Bibi probably agreed to swallow that most bitter of pills because he figured eventually the truth about Erdogan would come out and at that point Obama would look the fool and Israel could dangle this misguided foolishness in the faces of Kerry et al when they tried to preach to Israel about how to proceed given the unhelpful proclivities of their enemies]
