Sunday, October 8, 2017

Are US and Turkey on the Path to Cold War?

While Trump and Corker are excoriating each other on Twitter, while progressives and conservatives are arguing about the value of Pence's walkout on the kneeling football players during a game, while the world is pretending be shocked, SHOCKED about the allegations of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harrasment against a number of women...

US and Turkey just froze non-immigrant visas to each other in reciprocal moves, shortly after Erdogan demanded the return of Gulen movement members from the US in exchange for Western prisoners in Turkey. As I said earlier, policy is what happens when no one is looking. And what we have here is a rapid cooling in our relationship with Turkey, which somehow remains a member of NATO and technically, our ally.

Nevertheless, Turkey will not stop its extortion from the West until it feels severe pain from its actions, which should include blacklisting of anyone connected to the unlawful imprisonment of the American evangelical pastor, sanctions related to its funding of terrorist organizations and vast human rights violations, the freeze of Erdogan's off-shore accounst, and the flow of corrupt money into the US, the outing and PNGing of the many unregistered lobbyists, the uncovering of the Turkish intelligence involved in active measures on US soil, and much more.

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