For Turkey's strongman Erdoğan, trouble seeing eye to eye with Trump
It was a jubilant moment of victory for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
In a mid-December telephone call, he appeared to persuade President Trump to upend years of American policy in Syria by stepping away from US-backed Kurdish militias that Turkey calls terrorists and handing the reins to America’s NATO ally.
“You know what? It’s yours,” Mr. Trump reportedly said of Syria. “I’m leaving.”
For Turkey’s leader, the diplomatic achievement was the culmination of months of maneuvering to improve ties with Washington, which have cycled between bad and worse since the Obama years.
It was also a deal cut in a manner suited to Mr. Erdoğan and other heads of state in the region: one authoritative leader to another.
“Right now, Turkey’s power in foreign policy is an epic being written by destiny. And it is being written with the world’s giants,” Erdoğan said days later in a speech.
But the jubilation was short-lived
A Syria policy in fluxDiplomatic ‘malpractice’Dispute over Syrian KurdsDamage controlThe Khashoggi affair
