Turkey, once the most liberal democracy in the Islamic world, has taken a much more authoritarian turn under President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — and with President Donald Trump having withdrawn U.S. troops from northeastern Syria, critics of the decision have voiced major concerns over how Erdoğan is treating the United States’ Kurdish allies in that region. Some of those concerns, according to Axios, were voiced on Wednesday, when Erdoğan visited the Oval Office in Washington, D.C. and showed several prominent Republicans an anti-Kurdish propaganda film.
When Erdoğan — according to Axios’ sources — met with Trump and five GOP senators (including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Rick Scott of Florida) he pulled out his iPad and showed the Republicans a film that depicted Kurds as terrorists. Axios’ Jonathan Swan reports that the Turkish president “apparently thought he could sway these senators by forcing them to watch a clunky propaganda film,” noting that the Oval Office visit came at a time when Erdoğan “is trying to avoid sanctions over the purchase of a Russian missile defense system.”
Although Graham is almost always a Trump defender, he has been vehemently critical of the president’s decision to remove U.S. troops from northeastern Syria — and the propaganda film Erdoğan showed in the Oval Office didn’t convince Graham that the U.S. should have abandoned its Kurdish allies. According to one of Axios’ sources, Graham told Erdoğan, “Well, do you want me to go get the Kurds to make one about what you’ve done?”
View the complete November 14 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.