7:47 AM 12/24/2018 - Turkification of USA: Mattis resignation triggered by phone call between Trump and Erdoğan | M.N.: How shall we interpret and understand this and other reports? What leverage does Erdogan have over Trump? Does this "leverage" have a commercial or criminal subtext? Are Russia and/or "New Abwehr" behind all this? Where are the proverbial "adults in the room"? What should be the reaction and the course of actions? | Michael Novakhov - SharedNewsLinks℠: Donald Trump | The Guardian: Robert Mueller has enjoyed a year of successes
Turkification of USA
M.N.: How shall we interpret and understand this and other reports?
What leverage does Erdogan have over Trump?
Does this "leverage" have a commercial or criminal context?
Does it have something to do with Flynn - Gulen affair and Trump's comments on this subject ("case unresolved...")?
Are Russia and/or "New Abwehr" behind all this?
Where are the proverbial "adults in the room"?
What should be the reaction and the course of actions?
How can we get answers to these questions?
Mattis resignation triggered by phone call between Trump and Erdoğan | US news
To judge the effectiveness of the special counsel’s Trump-Russia inquiry look no further than the reaction of those in its crosshairs
One measure of special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutorial success in 2018 is the list of former top Donald Trump aides brought to justice: Michael Cohen pleaded guilty, a jury convicted Paul Manafort, a judge berated Michael Flynn.
Another measure is the tally of new defendants that Mueller’s team charged (34), the number of new guilty pleas he netted (five) and the amount of money he clawed back through tax fraud cases ($48m).
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Since taking office, Trump has squandered the counsel and goodwill of many able people, Mattis among them. At the same time, he has cosied up to unelected foreign dictators, autocrats and “strongmen” such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who pushed him into last week’s U-turn on Syria.
Trump is a liability on foreign policy, a global security risk and an untrustworthy, unreliable partner. But worse than all of that, the depth of his commitment to representative democracy and rule by consent is open to serious doubt. If things get really bad in America in the next two years, that’s the biggest worry.
Accounts in the US and Turkish press of the Friday call between Trump and Erdoğan show the volatile US president complying with the Turkish leader’s demands and taking his own advisers by surprise.
It is the latest example of a pattern in which Trump tends to side with authoritarian foreign leaders, over the advice of US officials...
“As soon as the US folds its tent and leaves, Turkey will immediately begin an air bombardment followed by a ground attack by the [Ankara-backed] Free Syrian army. Thousands will die, thousands will be displaced and will be given no haven within Syria. They will be turned away at the Turkish border,” said David Phillips, a former senior state department official, and the author of the new book: The Great Betrayal: How America Abandoned the Kurds and Lost the Middle East.
“For more than three and a half years, they have been our boots on the ground and were the point of the spear in retaking [the Isis stronghold] Raqqa,” Phillips, now at Columbia University, said. “Who is going to fight for us in the future when we throw our allies under the bus?”
Mattis’s colleagues had previously said he was determined to stay on despite multiple differences with Trump to safeguard the interests of the armed services, and in the words of one former Pentagon employee “serve the constitution”.
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