Day 1,002: Erdoğan took Trump’s childish letter, threw it away and is now openly threatening Trump
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke with Donald Trump on October 6 and asked him to move American troops from northern Syria. Trump did, and that led directly to ISIS prisoners being freed and the ethnic cleansing and systematic removal of the Kurds, longtime American allies.
Three days after that phone call, on October 9, Trump wrote Erdoğan an embarrassingly infantile letter.
Trump ended the letter with a truly ridiculous sign off: “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool! I will call you later.”
Erdoğan asked Trump to open the door. Trump gleefully opened the door. Trump was upset that there was a bipartisan rebuke for his decision as Erdoğan strengthened his position and wiped out loyal American allies.
Erdoğan took Trump’s letter and literally threw it in the trash.
The letter “was not taken seriously at the time, especially given its lack of diplomatic finesse,” Gülnur Aybet, a senior adviser to Erdoğan, told NPR’s Morning Edition today. The BBC quoted a Turkish source saying that “President Erdoğan received the letter, thoroughly rejected it, and put it in the bin.”
Now, Erdoğan is going a step farther and openly threatening Trump over the letter.
“President Trump’s letter, which did not go hand in hand with political and diplomatic courtesy, has appeared in the media,” Erdogan said Friday during a news conference about the Syria-Turkey cease-fire deal, according to a translation. “Of course we haven’t forgotten it. It would not be right for us to forget it.”
“For our relationship, there’s no point to dwell on this letter,” Erdogan told reporters on Friday. “This is not a priority for us, but when the time comes, we would like it to be known that we will take the necessary steps.”
Trump may be the world’s biggest fake tough guy. He talks a big game with Twitter fingers and while safely in the Oval Office, but when things get real and personal — like, say, when he is standing next to Vladimir Putin — he cowers.
It’s hard to imagine dealing with a national security and diplomatic issue worse than how Trump dealt with Turkey. He got bullied into moving troops by an authoritarian. He let American allies get wiped out. He let ISIS prisoners run free. He threatened an authoritarian with a juvenile letter. And now he’s being mocked by the world and an authoritarian.
1,002 days in, 460 to go
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