Before any more time goes by, I wanted to flag your attention to the November 8th Inside Briefing we did with foreign policy expert Heather Hurlburt on US relations with Turkey. US-Turkey relations may seem pretty far afield right now as we wrestle with the impeachment story. But it’s not. The whole briefing is illuminating. But I am suggesting you watch specifically for the part of the discussion where we get into how Trump’s actions and inactions toward Turkey have been shaped Mike Flynn and Rudy Giuliani, both of whom have been lathered up with vast sums of money by cronies of President Erdogan for the purpose of gaining access to and influence over the President. Giuliani appears to have played a critical role portraying the Kurds to Trump as duplicitous and anti-Trump.
This tells us a lot about Trump’s actions toward Turkey. More important is that this looks like the template for current US relations with numerous countries around the world, especially those with authoritarian and oligarchic states where the strongman figure has access, either directly or indirectly, to large sums of private money.
Thank you again for being an Inside member.
