Erdogan is expected to pay a state visit to Washington in the coming weeks.
According to Michael Anton, one of President Donald Trump’s top foreign policy aides, the chief characteristic of Trump’s foreign policy is unpredictability.
On the surface, unpredictability is a great advantage.
Keeping US enemies guessing, at least to some degree, about how the US will respond to hostile acts expands Washington’s maneuver room.
But one of the consequences of Trump’s desire not to be locked into one pattern of behavior is that it is unclear how he thinks about the world, and the many threats facing the US and its allies. As a result, it is difficult to know whether he can be trusted to take the actions necessary to protect American interests and to stand by America’s allies.
Take for instance the administration’s actions this week in relation to the nuclear deal with Iran. On the one hand, on Tuesday the State Department notified Congress that Iran is in compliance with its obligations under the nuclear deal.
On the other hand, on Wednesday Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stood before the cameras and read Iran the riot act. Tillerson set out in detail all of the ways that Iran threatens the US and its allies and many of the reasons that the nuclear deal is a disaster.
He announced that the Trump administration was revisiting US policy on Iran and pledged that Trump will not leave the Iranian threat to his successors.
It is almost impossible to square this circle.
So what is the administration’s policy? Can it be trusted to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons when it certifies that Iran is complying with an agreement it is manifestly breaching, by among other things, blocking inspections of its key nuclear sites and storing uranium in quantities that exceed those permitted under the deal? Then there is Turkey.
After 15 years in power, on Sunday Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan destroyed Turkey’s democracy once and for all. On April 16, 51.4% of Turkish voters voted to accord Erdogan all but absolute power.
Given that this means that Turkey is now effectively indistinguishable from Erdogan, the central question that people should answer before determining whether they are pleased or displeased by the results of Sunday’s referendum is who is Erdogan and what does he want.
Erdogan would say that he is a Muslim. He has made very clear, repeatedly, that he sees no distinction between moderate Islam and radical Islam. Islam is Islam, he says.
Maybe he is right. But in the West, distinctions are made. So it is important to set out what Erdogan means by Islam.
As George Friedman wrote at Real Clear World earlier this week, for Erdogan, Islam is an all-encompassing worldview. Its precepts dictate human behavior on every level. And it rejects secularism. In Erdogan’s Islam, the secularist belief that there is a distinction between the private and public spheres and that religion is a private matter is inconceivable.
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http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Turkey-and-Trumps-unpredictability-488525
