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Erdogan Takes A Hostage: Authoritarian Turkish Leader Demands U.S. Turn Over Dissident In Exchange For American Pastor
Recep_Tayyip_Erdogan_2017We have followed the rapid destruction of the secular government and civil liberties in Turkey under the authoritarian rule of Erdogan. Erdogan used a failed coup to push his effort to create a de facto Islamic regime and to complete his work in arresting his critics, including forcing the resignation of thousands of secular academics, and suspending all civil liberties in a proclaimed state of emergency. Previously, Erdogan threatened the United States if it didn’t handIslamic cleric Fethullah Gulen over to him and that a failure to yield to his demands would be a “big mistake.”  Now he is taking hostages.  Erdogan is suggesting that he will not turn over pastor Andrew Brunson (who was arrested in 2016) unless we turn over Gulen for likely torture and execution.  Erdogan, who has destroyed the once free press of Turkey as well as secular institutions, is leaving no doubt as to his achieving tyrannical rule in the once modern Islamic nation.

Erdogan now routinely calls any critic as “terrorist,” including students protesting for peace.  Brunson’s arrest has resulted in an international outcry. He is being tried for alleged terrorist ties.  He could face 35 years and Erdogan asked the U.S.  “Can you not extradite this man [Gulen] based on the prisoner swap” deal? If there is no such reciprocity, I am sorry.”
Despite his destroying free speech, free press, and political freedoms, the United States still supports this authoritarian extremist.  I have previously written of my love for traveling in Turkey, particularly Istanbul. However, I would not take my family to the country with Erdogan and his Islamic extremist government in power.  Indeed, now that he is taking hostages, it is hard to believe that any tourist would want to visit the country under the Erdogan regime.

107 thoughts on “Erdogan Takes A Hostage: Authoritarian Turkish Leader Demands U.S. Turn Over Dissident In Exchange For American Pastor”

  1. David Benson has his head thrust deep within his own cloacal zone – – as usual.

  4. Professor Turley has mentioned the so-called ‘pee party’ several times this past week. Said party was referenced in the Steele Dossier which Trump supporters dismiss as the work of a ‘partisan hack’. On two occasions Trump told James Comey that he left Moscow on the night in question. On this Trump was telling a ‘white lie’, it seems.

    Boomberg News has researched flight records concerning Trump’s trip to Moscow back in 2013. Trump’s plane left Moscow at almost 4 am. Which means Trump could have hosted the ‘pee party’ earlier that night. And being ‘grossed out’, by all that peeing, Trump may have decided to take off!

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/flight-records-illuminate-mystery-of-trump-s-moscow-nights

    1. Don’t you understand this is all about Putin leveraging Turkey out of NATO? Putin exacerbated the split between liberal, secular Turkey and reactionary Islamic Turkey, making way for Ergodan. Same with they Syrian civil war: create a humanitarian-refugee catastrophe to further destabilize Turkey.
      Why? Putin doesn’t want Istanbul and the straits controlled by a NATO ally. Putin bought Crimea at a high cost to give the Black Sea Fleet Sevastopol, Russia’s only warm-water (year around) sea port. Without Sevastopol, Russia’s Navy is locked in port much of the year. With Sevastopol, Russia has access to the Black Sea but must pass through the largest city of a NATO ally, Istanbul, to reach the Mediterranean Sea. So, Putin wants Turkey out of NATO.
      There must be a better way, if only we can think of one…

      1. Putin exacerbated the split between liberal, secular Turkey and reactionary Islamic Turkey, making way for Ergodan.

        Erdogan is a manifestation of a strand in Turkish political thinking which has been consequential for 50 years. One of the ancestors to Erdogan’s party won a plurality vote in the 1995 parliamentary elections, at a time when Vladimir Putin was a municipal official in St. Petersburg.

      2. David Parks —- All of your understandings are mistaken. To start, read about Novorossiysk, Kransnodar Krai.

  7. Times have changed in Turkey. From now on: Don’t visit Turkey. Don’t go on any Christian missions to Muslim majority countries unless you are willing to die. It’s just not safe. The entire region is sliding back to the Dark Ages, sadly. I can see why pastors want to minister to the Christians still in Turkey. However, now that Erdogan is dictator, I am reminded of the Armenian genocide. I don’t think Turkey has evolved. Even when it was a relatively secular, chic tourist destination, it refused to admit engaging in genocide, let alone apologizing for it. Things have not improved over the past few years…

    Turkey has always been of value to the US geopolitically. It was of use for access to that region. Such value diminishes with each word Erdogan utters.

  8. No mention of Flynn? The good professor for months has equated McCabe’s behavior as being analogous with the counts Flynn was charged with and pleaded guilty to. But at all times the professor omits the fact that Flynn’s plea to lying to a federal agent was a plea bargain to avoid more serious charges of conspiring to kidnap Gulan. Erdogan was “good guy” (Trump’s words) Flynn’s boss before Trump. Flynn even tried to get former CIA chief James Woolsey to help. Flynn was, is, a colossal piece of …

    1. Seamus,
      Flynn never approached James Woolsey with plan to kidnap Gulen.
      Woolsey himself is not certain what Flynn discussed in the meeting with the Turks…he missed most of that meeting.
      The day after that meeting, Woolsey presented a plan to discredit Gulen to the Turks for a $10 million fee.
      Flynn received about $600,000 lobbying for the Turks…..they never accepted the $10 million proposal from Woolsey.
      It looks like both Flynn and Woolsey were cashing in, or trying to cash in, on representing the interests of Ergodan.
      I think for a time the were both members of the same lobbying firm, but I’d have to check that to be certain.
      I’ll try to find out if Flynn and Woolsey were partners, or if Woolsey was working for Flynn.

  9. Leftists ultrasubcretins fail to recognize what it was that exactly brought Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table. As a public service, I will give those ultrasubcretins a reminder. It was this specific tweet:

    https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948355557022420992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2018%2Fjan%2F03%2Fdonald-trump-boasts-nuclear-button-bigger-kim-jong-un&tfw_creator=laurenegambino&tfw_site=guardian

    Once Kim Jong Un had his translaters tell him what Trump said, I’m sure that he literally turned “white” as a ghost and then peed and took a bowel movement in his pants. And after killing his servants that had realized what had happened to Jong Un and after he cleaned himself up, he immediately made arrangement to meet with President Trump or his advisers as soon as possible.

    Now, I know that you ultrasibcretins out there are a really dense bunch. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be ultrasubcretins. So, I’m gonna make it real simple for you. Trump basically threatened to annihilate Kim Jong Un and when that reality quickly sank into his pea brain, his legs grew limp as the blood drained from his pea brain and he recognized that death could be just around the corner for him, and everything would be lost.

    Erdogan is not different than Jong Un. They both are pure anti-freedom, anti-liberty, authoritarian leftists and they think and act alike in all material ways. Consequently, the same methods work. The enemies of civilization must be forced to recognize that the US is no longer having a love-fest with Islamofascists or any other kind of Communazis, as Obama’s strategy was. They must be made to feel that death is imminent if they continue in their ways.

      1. DB, since you are full of BS, answser the following questions:
        1. After Trump tweeted the above message, what was Jong Un’s next tweet back to Trump?
        (Hint: There was no tweet back from Jong Un. In fact, he was totally silent thereafter until his arrangement to meet with Trump administration reps happened.)

        2. How many more rocket tests did Jong Un order after Trump’s above tweet?
        (Hint: Zero.)

        Get it, ultrasubcretin. Or are you still too stupid to understand. (I admit that I sometimes give many posters here the benefit of the doubt by referring to them as ultasubcretins, but, in your case, that would be too lofty a goal.)

        1. You badly need mental health counseling, especially regarding recognizing reality. Go read what you wrote.

          1. You didn’t answer the questions, supersubultrasubcretin DB. That is not surprising. You can’t read, you can’t understand, you can’t think. you can’t reason, and don’t know your rear end from a hole in the ground.

    2. “Ultrasubcretins”
      Ralph’s word of the week.
      “ I’m smart! Not like everybody says! Like, dumb”
      Sure Ralph…

      1. Like DB, you’ve had your head thrust deep within your own cloacal zone for such an extended period of time that the noxious odors within your cloacal cavity have penetrated your deteriorating brain tissues, thus totally immobilizing your limited and barely functioning neurotransmitters and axon terminal.

            1. Unstable explosives stowed in an Army Air Corps plane, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Bishara SIrhan, and glioblastome multiforme.

              1. DSS – the first is true, second is iffy, third is too many bullets for one shooter and fourth I have not idea what you are talking about.

              2. “Unstable explosives stowed in an Army Air Corps plane”?
                Joe Kennedy Jr. was a USNR pilot of a Navy B-24 Liberator.
                What, pray tell me, would stable explosives be? Black powder made from equine urine?
                Yes, a bomber is full of explosives, almost by definition.
                Widely believed – but how does one prove it? – the bomb load of this top-secret remote-controlled aircraft was set off by the top-secret radars. (The engineers of one weren’t allowed to talk to the engineers of the other.)

  10. Erdogan was singing this song (in English) at a public gathering yesterday:

    (Music to tune of Henry The 9th I am Iam_

    I’m Erdogan the 8th I am. Erdogan the 8th I am, I am.
    I got married to a widow next door.
    She’s been married seven times before..
    And, everyone was named Erdogan.
    it wouldn’t be a Willey or a Fred.
    There ain’t no name like Erdogan.. Erdogan the 8th I am!

    (all members of the chorus cut a large fart at the end of the song)

    1. I think the pee tape is gonna turn out to be real.

      No, you’re hoping. And you’ll be disappointed.

      1. I hope it isn’t real because I don’t think I can take Trump dragging us even further down into the gutter.

        But, I won’t be at all surprised if it’s real.

        1. Trump cannot drag us farther into the gutter than your ilk have taken us.

          1. Hey, Toots,

            Trump IS the swamp as are members of his family and some in his administration. There is no bottom to their perfidy.

    2. slippers – remember Trump also said he operated on the premise that Russian hotel rooms were bugged.

  12. “We have followed the rapid destruction of the secular government and civil liberties in Turkey under the authoritarian rule of Erdogan.”

    – Professor Jonathan Turley
    _______________________

    “We have followed the rapid destruction of the secular government and civil liberties in America under the authoritarian rule of liberal democrat socialists and progressives (i.e. communists).”

    – Professor Jonathan Turley Omitted
    _____________________________

    Authoritarian rule prevails over America.

    The Constitution has been abrogated and replaced by the principles of the Communist Manifesto – Central Planning, Redistribution of Wealth and Social Engineering.

    Actual Americans need to annihilate the “authoritarian rule” of the socialists and their invader allies and restore the “manifest tenor” and dominion of the Constitution.

    – The entire welfare state is unconstitutional per Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 – Congress has only the power to tax for “general Welfare” not individual welfare.

    – James Madison – Private property is “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.” Private property rights preclude affirmative action, quotas, unfair “Fair Housing” laws, discriminatory “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.

    – “Invasion Immigration” has destroyed the country by overpopulation and the culture by “discordant intermixture” (Hillary won the popular vote of illegal aliens in CA and NY).

    Alexander Hamilton –

    “The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”

    Thomas Jefferson –

    “Suppose 20 millions of republican Americans thrown all of a sudden into France, what would be the condition of that kingdom? If it would be more turbulent, less happy, less strong, we may believe that the addition of half a million of foreigners to our present numbers would produce a similar effect here.”

    Intent of the Founders for citizenship in three iterations:

    Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795 and 1802 –

    “…that any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof,…”

    2. George, you’re amazing.

      To think that you really believe that horseflop.

      1. Which “horseflop,” the Constitution or the Intent of the American Founders?

        1. “…that any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof,…”

  13. It’s time to play–Who’s the horrible war criminal that needs humanitarian bombing.

    What this actually exposes is not only the evil in the man running Turkey but the evil in the people ruling over the US. We’ve actually sent people to many countries for torture. It used to be that Assad and Kadiffi were two of our favorites for that purpose. So, we can’t exactly say the US, whose CIA just cleared Blood Gena for detroying the torture tapes cares about torture or extraditing for more exotic forms of torture.

    Our good Friend MBS is reforming through murder and torture and has killed so many babies and children in Yemen with our help that Yemen is considered the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Perhaps it’s our good friend Netanyahu? He’s setting up snipers to kill unarmed protesters, including children.

    So exactly how does the US pick where it humanitarianly bombs or supports dictators/regimes? Inquiring human beings want to know.

    1. Jill, you are simply not in a position to rebuke anyone with a serious job.

      1. @Insufferable April 23, 2018 at 1:27 PM
        “Jill, you are simply not in a position to rebuke anyone with a serious job.”

        Jill is in every bit as much “a position to rebuke anyone with a serious job” as you are, and as she doesn’t seem to share your enthusiastic endorsement of various and sundry iterations of mass homicide of civilian populations, she’s actually in a much better position than are you to do so.

        1. Jill is in every bit as much “a position to rebuke anyone with a serious job” as you are, and as she doesn’t seem to share your enthusiastic endorsement of various and sundry iterations of mass homicide of civilian populations, she’s actually in a much better position than are you to do so.

          You operate under the illusion that human conflict is a function of the machinations of the bogies in palaeo-clown talking points. Other people are familiar with history and sociology and understand that’s rot.

          You all operate under the illusion that you should go about lobbing accusations at perfect strangers. There is flat nothing of value coming out of your mouth or hers, but being a Dunning-Kruger exemplar, you’ll never figure that out.

          1. @Insufferable April 23, 2018 at 4:31 PM

            “You operate under the illusion that human conflict is a function of the machinations of the bogies in palaeo-clown talking points. Other people are familiar with history and sociology and understand that’s rot. You all operate under the illusion that you should go about lobbing accusations at perfect strangers. There is flat nothing of value coming out of your mouth or hers, but being a Dunning-Kruger exemplar, you’ll never figure that out.”

            At the risk of being unkindly truthful, I wouldn’t be calling attention to the phenomenon of ego-centric grandiosity, if I were you. Your smug, evidence-starved pronouncements aren’t exactly stunning manifestations of acumen.

            On the contrary, whether it’s all you’re capable of or not, you consistently present yourself in these threads as a self-satisfied prig with scant substance to share.

            1. If it helps you feel better, Ken, dream up whatever you care to.

          2. @Insufferable April 23, 2018 at 4:31 PM
            “You operate under the illusion that human conflict is a function of the machinations of the bogies [,] in palaeo-clown [sic] talking points.”

            The only “talking points” I rely on are the following ten and what He had to say about them in the New Testament:

            “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17, NIV).

            I call your attention to number 6, in particular, as you seem to be blithely unaware of it:

            “1) Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

            2) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

            3) Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.

            4) Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

            5) Honor thy father and thy mother.

            6) Thou shalt not kill.

            7) Thou shalt not commit adultery.

            8) Thou shalt not steal.

            9) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

            10) Thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy neighbor’s.”

            (Exodus 20:2-17, KJV)

      1. What money am I supposed to follow? Jill, who is opinionated in direct proportion to her ignorance, fancies the U.S. Government is responsible for the latest round of political violence in the Yemen. That that violence is part of the 5th insurrection in South Arabia in the last 60 years seems to have escaped her. What does this have to do with commercial interests?

        1. nII,

          There are two things to note about your bizarre comments: 1. they show a profoundly authoritarian mindset. You do not want ordinary people to think for themselves 2. you focus in on Saudi Arabia only when that is only one nation which I use as part of my argument. You are so focused on SA that honestly, it does make me wonder if you work for them.

          Just so people will know what I actually wrote:

          It’s time to play–Who’s the horrible war criminal that needs humanitarian bombing.

          What this actually exposes is not only the evil in the man running Turkey but the evil in the people ruling over the US. We’ve actually sent people to many countries for torture. It used to be that Assad and Kadiffi were two of our favorites for that purpose. So, we can’t exactly say the US, whose CIA just cleared Blood Gena for detroying the torture tapes cares about torture or extraditing for more exotic forms of torture.

          Our good Friend MBS is reforming through murder and torture and has killed so many babies and children in Yemen with our help that Yemen is considered the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Perhaps it’s our good friend Netanyahu? He’s setting up snipers to kill unarmed protesters, including children.

          So exactly how does the US pick where it humanitarianly bombs or supports dictators/regimes? Inquiring human beings want to know.

          Ken, thanks for trying!
          Slippers, I agree.

          1. If you’re going to barf emotion at people, you could at least be more concise. Some measure of courtesy mixed in with your essential shewishness would be most welcome.

  14. Professor Turley is absolutely correct: Erdogan is taking Turkey down the path of authoritarian rule. And that presents major challenges for U.S. foreign policy. Turkey is a key member of the NATO alliance occupying a strategic corner between Europe and the Middle East.

    Turkey was blamed for allowing ISIS fighters access to Syria. And more recently Turkey invaded northern Syria to expel U.S.-backed Kurdish militias that had been highly effective in defeating ISIS. That confrontation is still fluid and generally under-reported in western media.

    However Professor Turley fails to mention that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had been secretly employed as a consultant for Turkey while working for the Trump campaign. The hypocrisy of these double-dealings should be emphasized to Turely readers. While Flynn was leading those “Jail To Hillary” chants at Trump campaign rallies, he was functioning as an unregistered lobbyist for Turkey.

    Therefore when Professor Turley tells us that Flynn’s crime of lying to federal investigators was no worse than Andrew McCabe press leaks, he is greatly understating the true scope of Flynn’s activities. Flynn took the most favorable plea he could get. The true nature of his activities was far more disturbing than Professor Turley let on.

    1. Yeah well, JT likes to omit things that his base won’t believe anyway. Like facts and things.

    2. Flynn took the most favorable plea he could get.

      No, Flynn pleaded to a nuisance process crime, because that’s all Mueller could get. This has been explained to you by others.

        1. No, Nutchacha, they could have hit Flynn with other raps.

          The issue of your imagination does not interest me. It interests no one.

      2. Isn’t it the nature of a plea bargain that you agree to plead guilty to a lesser charge rather than stand trial on a graver offense? What proof do you have that Flynn’s plea was any different?

        1. See Andrew McCarthy on this point. A plea bargain of that character would delineate the conspiracy of which the pleading defendant was supposedly a part. Flynn’s did not because…there was no conspiracy.

  15. This clearly ups the stakes, but I am not sure I would want to play poker with Trump, he is not a wimp like Obama.

    1. President “The Don” Trump will grab Erdogon by the —– and make Erdogan an offer he can’t refuse.

      Next question.

    2. In one year Obama will be doing anything he wants, what will Dirtbag Donnie be doing?

      1. He’ll be President of the United States and you’ll still be butt-hurt about it.

          1. Well, some ‘resister” might make it past the Secret Service, ’tis true.

    3. @Paul C Schulte April 23, 2018 at 12:23 PM

      “This clearly ups the stakes, but I am not sure I would want to play poker with Trump, he is not a wimp like Obama.”

      Who could blame you? And you certainly don’t want to get into a button-and-rocket-size comparison contest with him. I understand that Kim Jong-un made that mistake and that his doctors are still trying to re-hydrate him.

  16. Suspend trade and any monetaryh support to present government, Support change of goveernment and in the Turkish East support self determination and the return of their country for the Kurds.

  17. Well, we could tell Erdogan he plays nice with us or drone strikes start taking out his cousins. He might find kidnapping and jailing innocent 3d parties a less attractive activity.

    1. Taking out Ergogan’s cousins won’t work. Ergogan doesn’t particularly like his cousins. But what he does like is his control and power over the government. So some nicely dropped bombs on all the key government buildings should do very nicely. Authoritarian, Islamonazi scum only understand one thing: a show of relentless, ball-shattering force. He’ll come around faster to reality than Kim Jong Un did.

      1. Ergogan doesn’t particularly like his cousins.

        “Sez who?

          1. What, he doesn’t slate his cousins for elected office, ergo he doesn’t care for them? I’ve never hired any of my cousins, and I like them just fine.

            1. I suppose the USA should use you as a national policy adviser since Ergogan thinks exactly like you do. All the US policy team has to do is ask you what you would do and they’ll instantly know what Ergogan would do.

      1. So, you think witless non sequiturs are the proper response to every comment?

      2. No, ultrasubcretin. The threat of violence can often work just as well with scumbag lowlifes. But when that doesn’t work, why then, yes. the enemies of civilization must be shown brute force. It is the only thing scumbag lowlifes understand. Get it, lefty?

          2. WillBS, One thing’s for certain in your case. You did not skip taking your head out from deep within the recesses of your own cloacal zone.

      3. @Chris P Bacon April 23, 2018 at 11:53 AM
        “So you think violence is the solution to every problem?”

        There are, in fact, several authoritarian followers commenting regularly here who emphatically think that violence or the threat of it is the solution to every international problem. They have that in common with their authoritarian leaders with whom they strongly identify.

        As Madeleine Albright so winsomely put it, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
        https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/03/defence_spending_and_libya

        Indeed, and as Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson wisely observed, “What good does it do to have a good nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?”
        https://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/trump-spokesperson-why-bother-having-nuclear-weapons-if-youre-afraid-to-use-them/

        What doesn’t seem to have occurred to their dutiful followers, yet, is that they, unlike their fearless, death-defying leaders, don’t have passes to the sprawling underground Continuity of Government bunkers to which their leaders will repair when they purposely or inadvertently blunder into a thermonuclear war.

    3. @Insufferable April 23, 2018 at 11:32 AM
      “Well, we could tell Erdogan he plays nice with us or drone strikes start taking out his cousins. He might find kidnapping and jailing innocent 3d parties a less attractive activity.”

      Well, what’s a little advocacy of murder among friends? It’s the recommendation of someone essentially bereft of imagination and basic humanity insofar as resolving international disputes is concerned.

      If it weren’t directed at foreign nationals, but at strangers in some family in the US, it would be universally recognized and condemned as the stupidly criminal proposal that it is.

      Because the candidates for extermination are foreigners, however, i.e., non-members of the American Tribe, such a recommendation passes, among other ethically and cognitively challenged people, from being recognized as patently criminal to being magic-thinkingly viewed as one option within the “normal” range of behaviors toward members of inferior societies.

      With the massively destructive technologies that are increasingly available to both state and non-state actors, however, such a double standard of criminality is not only inherently stupid and immoral, it’s also increasingly suicidal.

  18. Back when the EU was considering accepting Turkey’s application to join, many Germans warned that beneath Turkey’s veneer of western sophistication, there lurked a medieval heart. They were prescient.

    I don’t have a problem dealing with Turkey as an ally – they are a vital player in the Caucasus, Middle East, and Caspian areas. They are a fact on the ground, and we need them.

    But recognize that they are fickle friends, barbaric in impulse, and bully boys at heart. Ultimately, we will become adversaries as our interests conflict.

    Mr. Erdogan is joining the pantheon of unsavory American friends like Somoza, Papa Doc Duvalier, and Marcus.

    1. Its amusing how in the mind of some every regime which wasn’t incorporated into the East Bloc was somehow an American ‘friend’ and the U.S. Embassy is thus responsible for everything disagreeable which happens there. Many years ago I was reading a column of letters to the editor and there in among the was a denunciation of the U.S. government inspired by political events in Burma, a country with a decades long history of isolationism and neutralism. It occurred to me then that the people who talk this way know nothing and are striking poses. The Cold War is long over, but this stupid exercise persists.

      there lurked a medieval heart.

      Really? All penances and scholastic philosophy in the Turkish mind?

    2. “..they are fickle friends, barbaric in impulse, and bully boys at heart.”

      Neither Turks, nor Russians, nor Chinese nor USers, nor any other group of people think or behave in a uniform way. Believing they have such uniform behavior makes it easier to demonize large groups for ethnic cleansing and dropping bombs on cities, but the assumption is unfair as well as untrue.

      1. @Chris P Bacon April 23, 2018 at 11:58 AM
        “ ‘..they are fickle friends, barbaric in impulse, and bully boys at heart.’

        “Neither Turks, nor Russians, nor Chinese nor USers, nor any other group of people think or behave in a uniform way. Believing they have such uniform behavior makes it easier to demonize large groups for ethnic cleansing and dropping bombs on cities, but the assumption is unfair as well as untrue.”

        Well, Chris if you’re going to get all rational on everybody, you’re just setting your self up for being recognized as the leftist-pinko-commie-anti-american-appeasing-anti-war freak that you are.

        You obviously need some classes in the reality thinking of bomb-first-and-negotiate-later-if-there’re-any-scumbags-left.

        Stand by, as I’m confident that enough commenters here will school you in the need to get your mind right, so you can make a contribution, however modest, to the climate of international violence that holds out the probability, if not the promise, of Armageddon.

        As with massively repressive governance, you shouldn’t knock the criminally insane and covertly suicidal approach to foreign relations, unless you’ve tried it.

  19. Americans should not ever vacation or visit or travel to Turkey. Bottom line. Smart people have known this for years.

    1. I not only wouldn’t visit Turkey, but I’ve refused to buy any of their products. The fools that I see at Costco buying those tasty Calimyrna Figs don’t have the sense to know that they’re sending money to promote Islamoterrorism every time they buy the stuff. I’ve cut-off all Turkish products completely for the last few years. Heck, I won’t even buy Turkish Taffy.

      1. Do you also boycott vendors whom you suspect of supporting ethnic cleansing and apartheid?

    2. The great movie, “Midnight Express” contains many ironies of the left.

      The first-rate screenplay was written by Oliver Stone relatively early in his career after graduating from NYU’s film school, where Martin Scorsese was one of his teachers. And in the 1980s, Stone would make several excellent movies, with the last truly great one being his masterpiece, “JFK.” But as Stone grew closer and closer to the left, his talent vanished in tandem, and he began to fall in love with the very tyrants and the enemies of civilization that he attacked in his earlier movies. Today, if Stone were given the opportunity, he’d make a movie about how wonderful Erdogan’s “leadership” has been.

      Another great irony of “Midnight Express” is what happened to its star, Brad Davis, who did a terrific acting job, carrying much of the weight of the movie. The sudden success of “Midnight Express” was too much for Davis. He already had the kind of background that would make for a breeding ground for addiction. He lived a tortured childhood that was spent at the hands of an alcoholic father and a sexually abusive mother. Perhaps a great background for acting, but a terrible background for living life normally. His own drinking excesses and quest for the escape with drugs ultimately led him to start shooting up heroin. Such recklessness led to carelessness, and Davis contracted AIDS from using dirty needles.

      Did leftist Hollywood attempt to help him in any way? Of course not. Hollywood, David soon learned, was an hypocrisy.

      In his original proposal for a book on his life, Davis wrote: ”I make my money in an industry that professes to care very much about the fight against AIDS — that gives umpteem benefits and charity affairs with proceeds going to research and care — but in actual fact, if an actor is even rumored to have H.I.V., he gets no support on an individual basis. He does not work.”

      Oh, the irony of the left.

      1. with the last truly great one being his masterpiece, “JFK.”

        Wherein Stone promotes the notion that the military-industrial complex took down Kennedy by subcontracting the job to a collection of French Quarter homosexuals.

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Res ipsa loquitur – The thing itself speaks

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