Erdogan is not an ally of the United States, nor an even particularly reliable member of NATO.
The dream of a reconstituted Caliphate on the order of the Ottoman Empire burns brightly in the hearts of bearded men with blazing eyes. If they set to fighting among themselves as to just who should assume the office, that would be one thing, but so far they have used surrogates for this battle, and that involves a LOT more people, few if any of whom have a dog in the fight.
Tayyip Erdogan, our Islamic-supremacist, jihad-supporting NATO “ally,” who — if we may borrow a phrase from a good friend of his — has “fundamentally transformed” Turkey from a Western-leaning democracy to a suffocating sharia state...
As previously noted here, Erdogan is one of the pioneers of the Muslim Brotherhood–crafted “integrate but don’t assimilate” strategy for overrunning Europe and, in time, the United States. The plan urges Muslims to relocate to the West but maintain Islamic mores while pressuring the home governments to accommodate sharia (Islamic law). A few years back, Erdogan gave a speech to a throng of Muslim migrants in Cologne, decrying Western pressure on Muslims to assimilate in their new European homelands as “a crime against humanity.” His goal is to transport repressive Islamic standards to the West, where they will snuff out free speech and other liberties inconvenient to tyrants. The game-plan is working to a fare-thee-well, feeding the explosion of Islamic enclaves that gradually assert their autonomy from Western governance while serving as incubators of jihadist radicalization.