The US, Sloat added, worries about Turkey’s growing friendship with Russia and acceleration away from democracy. That’s been exacerbated by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, an authoritarian who has dismantled secular liberal politics in favor of Islamist political values, harbors anti-Western views, and has widened the US-Turkey gap. [...]
“This is no longer anything that can accurately be called a strategic partnership,” Lisel Hintz, a Turkey expert at Johns Hopkins University, told me. “I wouldn’t even call Turkey an ally. An ally doesn’t behave the way in which Turkey has been behaving.” [...]
A faction of the Turkish military, claiming to speak for the entire Turkish Armed Forces, aimed to oust Erdoğan in the name of democracy — despite the fact that Erdoğan and his party were democratically elected. But the attempt failed, mainly because large portions of the military sided with their president. [...]
And Erdoğan’s rhetoric during local elections last week stoked anti-American sentiment among his base throughout the campaign. There has long been anti-US feeling within the Turkish government and public — partly because of rampant conspiracy theories about America secretly plotting to crush Turkey, and Washington’s much-disliked Middle East policies — but the autocrat ratcheted up the language to a whole new level.
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