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Burak Bekdil

Burak Bekdil

Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist. He regularly writes for the Gatestone Institute and Defense News, and is a fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is also a founder of, and associate editor at, the Ankara-based think tank Sigma.

President Donald Trump’s “businessman’s optimism” regarding his newfound ally notwithstanding, acute policy differences and eroding confidence threaten the future of U.S.-Turkish relations.
Western countries are now paying the price of their former leaders’ naiveté regarding the “mild political Islam” they ridiculously hoped would be a role model for other Muslim countries.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is wrong to think a cross-border military operation into Syria will solve an ethnic conflict that dates back to the early 19th century.
The U.S. administration has offered to sell $3.5 billion worth of Patriot missiles to Turkey, apparently in an effort to stop Ankara from going ahead with a planned S-400 deal with Moscow.
Turkey’s radical shift in crises, first with Russia and then with America, shows that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan cannot afford to risk a punishing economic crisis that might cost him his power.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey will not abide by the renewed U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil and shipping industries, claiming that they are “steps aimed at unbalancing the world.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has often argued that Christian Europe should admit more Muslim refugees.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan does not understand that his biggest divergence with Russia is over the future of all of Syria, not just a Syrian province.
The current situation is fundamentally different from other crises. Turkish public sentiment in the 1960s and 1970s was largely pro-American (and anti-Soviet). Today, 79 percent of Turks have an unfavorable opinion of the United States.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, undoubtedly the most popular and divisive leader in modern Turkish history, has already ruled the country longer than Atatürk, the founder of modern, secular Turkey.
Four decades after they emerged as marginal parties in the 1970s, Turkey’s militant Islamists and ultranationalists won a combined 53.6 percent of the national vote and 57 percent of parliamentary seats.
The Turks will choose between augmenting what is practically one-man rule based on Islamist politics and returning to a regime based on the separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers.