This piece was co-authored with Princeton professor, Michael A. Reynolds.
President Trump鈥檚 critics see his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria as the product of a dangerous impulsiveness that ignores strategic realities. They argue that it betrays the People鈥檚 Protection Units, or YPG, the Kurdish force that helped the U.S. defeat Islamic State, while rewarding a dangerous autocrat, Turkey鈥檚 President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But it is Mr. Trump鈥檚 critics who disregard reality.
Most members of America鈥檚 foreign-policy establishment see Turkey as an ungrateful ally, perhaps even a Trojan horse inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization鈥檚 walls. On Capitol Hill and in many Washington think tanks, a call for concessions to Tehran will get a more sympathetic hearing than a call to compromise with Ankara, a treaty ally for 67 years. Turkey鈥檚 determination to secure its southern border against the YPG is a wanton impulse, in the prevailing view. But the YPG has substantial ties to the Kurdistan Workers鈥� Party, the PKK, as then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter testified before Congress in April 2016. Classified by the State Department as a terrorist organization, the PKK has been waging armed struggle against Turkey since 1984 at a cost of tens of thousands of lives, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, a respected source on armed conflict.
Turkey鈥檚 critics point to Ankara鈥檚 recent purchase of the S-400 air-defense missile system from Russia to confirm their belief that Mr. Erdogan is rupturing the U.S.-Turkey relationship. But that鈥檚 an oversimplification that rests on a lazy assumption鈥攖hat Mr. Erdogan鈥檚 personality is the root of the rancor in American-Turkish relations. It invokes his authoritarianism, Islamist worldview, hostility to Israel, sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood, and opposition to Kurdish nationalists inside and outside Turkey鈥檚 borders to argue that Turkey is unworthy of U.S. support.
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