February 18, 2018 SnyderTalk: Tillerson can’t fix what ails US ties with Turkey

“I am Yahweh; that is My Name!  I will not give My glory to anyone else, nor share My praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42: 8)

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Chicago Tribune—Tillerson can’t fix what ails US ties with Turkey:

The Trump administration appears to have pulled relations with NATO ally Turkey away from a “crisis point” after a slew of high-level meetings over the past week. But sharp disagreements on everything from the war in Syria to Russia’s role in the Middle East make it unlikely that the United States can restore warm ties any time soon with a country long seen as the southern flank of the Western alliance in Europe.

“We’re not going to act alone any longer. We’re not going to be U.S. doing one thing and Turkey doing another,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at a press conference on Friday in Ankara after meetings with Turkish officials, including Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“We’re going to lock arms, we’re going to work through the issues that are causing difficulties for us, and we’re going to resolve them,” Tillerson said.

Cavusoglu echoed the effort to put a brave face on the rapidly souring relationship. “We have taken an important turn in terms of normalizing our relations. We reached an agreement and an understanding,” he said.

But few details were forthcoming. U.S. and Turkish officials worked through the night to put out a joint statement on Friday meant to showcase some diplomatic breakthroughs, but it was heavy on promises and light on specifics. It included a plan to establish something referred to as a “results-oriented mechanism” to bolster their relationship, which will be “activated no later than mid-March.”

There were no details on what the mechanism is – or how it could possibly address the fundamental disagreements that have surfaced between Washington and Ankara in recent years and which have grown even more stark in recent weeks.

The sharpest point of contention between the two sides – other than longstanding Turkish suspicion that the United States was somehow behind a July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey – is a widely divergent view of how to deal with the crisis in Syria. The United States is backing and arming Kurdish militias fighting in northern Syria, seeing in them among the few effective troops on the ground to fight both Islamic State terrorists and regime forces of Bashar al Assad.

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SnyderTalk Comment:

The problem with Turkey can’t be solved as long as Recep Tayyip Erdogan is Turkey’s president, because he is the problem.

Erdogan is a duplicitous man.  He says one thing and does another.  That’s obvious.  He’s not trustworthy.

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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)

See “His Name is Yahweh”.

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