{"id":137776,"date":"2020-12-20T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2020-12-20T04:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/will-biden-stand-up-to-turkeys-erdogan\/"},"modified":"2020-12-20T07:00:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T04:00:17","slug":"will-biden-stand-up-to-turkeys-erdogan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/will-biden-stand-up-to-turkeys-erdogan\/","title":{"rendered":"#Will Biden stand up to Turkey’s Erdogan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Will Biden stand up to Turkey’s Erdogan?<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n

Here\u2019s one foreign-policy challenge where President-elect Joe Biden seems set to improve on President Trump: facing the fact that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is no friend to the West \u2014 or freedom, for that matter.<\/p>\n

In a 2014 New York Times interview, Biden rightly called Erdogan an \u201cautocrat\u201d and said the United States should back his opponents who\u2019d like to get him out of office. \u201cHe has to pay a price,\u201d Biden said.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t pay much price in the Obama or Trump years. He was long President Barack Obama\u2019s favorite leader in the Muslim world, while Trump has boasted that he and Erdogan \u201chave been very good friends, for a long time, almost from day one.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, when Erdogan\u2019s been crushing freedom for at least a decade, and at a faster pace since the failed 2016 coup. He\u2019s used state power to utterly neuter the once-free press, while still jailing journalists at a record rate. (Though China is beating him for No. 1 this year, 48 to 47 imprisoned reporters.) This year he started taking fresh aim at social media<\/a>, pushing through laws that will make it easier to use them as another tool of state spying and persecution.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s jailed tens of thousands of political critics \u2014 thousands for the \u201ccrime\u201d of insulting him<\/em>. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s also working steadily to end the republic\u2019s century-old official secularism, with policies aiming to create a \u201cpious generation\u201d of radical Muslims who \u201cwill work for the construction of a new civilization\u201d that emphasizes Ottoman history, rather than Western ideals.<\/p>\n

Some democracy lives on: After his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, lost last year\u2019s Istanbul mayoral election to its rival Republican People\u2019s Party, or CHP, Erdogan alleged fraud and forced a do-over. But the people of Turkey\u2019s largest city (and commerical nerve center) protested in mass, and the CHP\u2019s Ekrem Imamoglu still serves as mayor.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Erdogan has revived the central government\u2019s war on Turkey\u2019s Kurds, and even taken that conflict into neighboring Syria \u2014 where his interventions in the civil war have been more about reining in that nation\u2019s Kurds, and supporting his Islamist allies, than countering the rule of bloody Bashar al-Assad. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s also a big booster of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas \u2014 and increasingly allied with Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia, to the consternation of all Turkey\u2019s NATO allies.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration on Monday sanctioned Turkey over its purchase of S-400s, a Russian missile-defense system: It\u2019s banning all US export licenses and loans to Turkey\u2019s defense-procurement agency and freezing the assets of the agency\u2019s president, Ismail Demir. But the move comes pretty late; Ankara finalized the Russia sale more than a year ago. <\/p>\n

Biden has the opportunity to reset Turkey-US relations. As veteran Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas noted in The Washington Post, \u201cTurkey would not have so deviated from the West and its\u00a0human rights record would not have grown so abysmal<\/a>\u201d had Trump taken a harder line with Erdogan.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s needed, she says, is \u201ca US administration to deliver a clear message that doesn\u2019t embolden Erdogan\u2019s authoritarian instincts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surely Biden can do that much.<\/p>\n

We wish Biden luck \u2014 he\u2019s going to need it.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more News<\/a> articles, you can visit our News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Will Biden stand up to Turkey’s Erdogan?” Here\u2019s one foreign-policy challenge where President-elect Joe Biden seems set to improve on President Trump: facing the fact that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is no friend to the West \u2014 or freedom, for that matter. In a 2014 New York Times interview, Biden rightly called Erdogan an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/Biden_Erdogan-2.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[87084,43,70410,991,75392,75393],"class_list":["post-137776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-12-19-20","tag-editorial","tag-foreign-policy","tag-joe-biden","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}