>>It was Erdogan's time to sit at the feet of the emperor. Lots of interesting comments by Trump. Below a portion from: zerohedge.com
And in Syria, where US-backed Kurdish forces in the north are still a thorn in Turkey's side, Erdogan's backing of rebel forces led by now-President Ahmed al-Sharaa has reshaped the country and its trajectory, leading critics to warn Ankara may have too much control over Damascus.
"They're your surrogates. I think you should take the credit for it," Trump told Erdogan with dozens of reporters gathered around them in the Oval Office on Thursday. "Take the credit. For 2,000 years you've been trying to take over Syria," Trump said, turning to the members of his cabinet and advisers in the room.
"He took over Syria, and he doesn't want to take the credit... it was a victory for Turkey," he added in the more brazen style of public diplomacy the world has come to expect from this US president. Trump said it was Erdogan - alongside the leaders of Qatar and Saudi Arabia - who asked him to lift decades-long US sanctions on Syria to allow a broken state to start anew.
"I don't think they couldn't have lived with those sanctions. I took them off to give them a chance to breathe, but the president was one of the people that was responsible for that. He asked me to do it," Trump said.
Will Todman, a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told MEE that the Trump Administration "has dedicated considerable diplomatic and political capital to the Syria issue, but it continues to signal that it will not fund Syria’s stabilization and does not want to play a large role in Syria in the longer term".
Trump, he added, "wants regional actors, including Turkey and Arab Gulf states to fund Syria’s recovery". But Erdogan remains nervous about clashing with Israel in Syria, Todman added, and "lacks the resources to be able to dedicate significant funds to Syria’s reconstruction and stabilization".
When asked by a reporter how Trump feels about Erdogan's opposing position to the US on Israel's actions in Gaza, Trump said, "Well, I don't know his stance. I can't tell you about that."
"I'll just say that we want to get Gaza over," he added. "I think we're close to getting some kind of a deal done... we want to get the hostages back".
Prior to his US trip, Erdogan described Trump as a "valued friend". On Thursday, in brief remarks to reporters in the Oval Office, he said the two of them have "managed to elevate the level of our relationship to a new horizon".
"We discussed so many topics, particularly the F-16 and other issues. We will deal with them... We are always ready to do whatever we need to, and to be up to our responsibilities," Erdogan said.
It's no secret that the former Biden administration - and the Democratic Party on the whole - wasn't as fond of Turkey's record on what it described as undemocratic practices and human rights violations. |
