In an article entitled "Why is the US still helping Turkey sabotage its role in Syria?" the Jerusalem Post highlighted that the Trump administration often enables Turkey’s aggressive behavior against Greece.
"Washington sent its most pro-Turkey diplomat to Ankara this week as Turkey’s regime hosted Hamas leaders in a red-carpet ceremony in Istanbul," wrote Seth Frantzman for the Jerusalem Post. "Former US ambassador James Jeffrey, who is now the US envoy for Syria and the anti-ISIS campaign, went to Turkey and said the US had 'proved our value in many fields outside of Syria.'"
Frantzman highlighted that Jeffrey's comments "are the latest in his endless praise of Turkey and never holding the country to account" and that the American diplomat said his comment were the US trying "to prove its value to Turkey."
"Usually, smaller countries like Turkey are expected to prove their values as allies to the US, but in the Ankara-Washington relationship, it is the other way around," the Jerusalem Post highlighted.
However, most interestingly is that the Israeli newspaper highlighted how the administration of US President Donald Trump has a long history of appeasing Turkey, including at Greece's expense.
"Some in the Trump administration are very close to Ankara and often appear to enable Turkey’s increasingly aggressive behavior against Greece, its invasions of Syria, bombing of Iraq and bashing of Israel," Frantzman wrote.
For close observers of Turkish-American relations, Trump's appeasement for Turkish aggression is glaringly obvious.
Trump said last Monday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan listens to him, as reported by Greek City Times.
“I don’t like saying this publicly, but it happens to be true. I get along with him and he listens,” Trump said, which led many to question why the American president has not told Turkey to deescalate its hostilities with Greece.
John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor for Trump, described in his book ‘The Room Where It Happened’ that the relationship between the American president and Erdoğan was a “bromance," especially as Trump agreed to help hide Turkey breaching US-imposed sanctions on Iran.
Meanwhile, Erdoğan was again praised by U.S. President Donald Trump, this time at an event with an American pastor who was illegally imprisoned and taken hostage in Turkey for over two years.
Pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested in October 2016 in Turkey and held for two years on charges of complicity with the Fethullah Gülen movement and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was told by Trump two days ago that "I have to say, to me, President Erdoğan was very good."
