With his visit previously delayed, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived at the White House on Wednesday, receiving a warm welcome form President Trump, who declared himself a “big fan” of the president.
Erdogan’s visit wasn’t all smiles and handshakes, however, as a number of lawmakers in both parties were deeply critical of Erdogan on a number of issues, particularly the Turkish invasion of Syria.
Erdogan isn’t particularly happy with the US Congress either, having angrily condemned a recent Armenian genocide resolution as a grave insult to Turkey. President Trump, for his part, seemed to want to avoid the appearance of controversy, so in between condemning impeachment efforts, he was carefully avoiding any topic of disagreement, while praising Erdogan.
Over the past month, the US and Turkey have been at odds on issues centering on Syria, leading to President Trump threatening to destroy the entire Turkish economy on a moment’s notice. From Trump’s perspective, that is all long forgotten, and while Congress is insisting that from their perspective it is anything but forgotten, Erdogan so far seems not to be looking to pick fights with Congress while he is in the US, and just focus on all the praise Trump has to offer.
Erdogan is working with Putin now to help restore Syria’s borders and bring peace to the country. That is Congress’ real objection to him. They certainly don’t care a damn about Erdogan’s terrorists, many of whom were trained by the CIA to do unto Arab Syrians what they are now doing to Kurdish ones.
That is pathetically hypocritical with that “concern” over Turkey’s incursion into Syria, after we have practically the entire Middle East saturated with US troops who have invaded and threatened numerous countries there.
Trump invited in five of his close allies among Republican senators to blast away at Erdogan, while Trump sat back and smile and assured Erdogan that, “It isn’t me, you see what you face?”
Of course Trump arranged in advance for his friends to do that to his guest. That is why he was smiling throughout the assault on his guest.
It let’s Trump do the diplomacy of “not me” while still doing the pushing. It has its place. It is not something to attack. It is actually competent, to an extent rarely seen from Trump.