This is one of the most astonishing letters in
diplomatic history.
By Alex Ward
October 16, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" - President Donald Trump
sent a letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan last week urging him to make a deal with the
Kurds, saying: “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a
fool!”
The letter is dated October 9, which
means it was written just three days after Trump
ordered the withdrawal of US troops from northern
Syria. The goal of the letter, it seems, was to
convince Erdoğan not to send his forces into Syria
to attack the Kurds, who had been the American
military’s strongest partner in the fight against
ISIS.
“You don’t want to be responsible for
slaughtering thousands of people,” Trump writes,
before threatening to destroy Turkey’s economy if
Erdoğan doesn’t heed his demands. Trump then calls
on the Turkish president to make a deal with Kurdish
leaders so they don’t fight each other.
“History will look upon you favorably
if you get this done the right and humane way,” the
letter reads. “It will look upon you forever as the
devil if good things don’t happen.”
But, as we now know,
Turkey did launch its offensive against the Kurds —
on October 9. It’s unclear when Erdoğan received
the letter.
The letter, first obtained by Fox Business’s
Trish Regan on Wednesday and which I confirmed
shortly afterward, goes against every tenet of
decorum and presidential communication. It’s brash,
nasty, and lacking any diplomatic tact whatsoever.
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“Having helped draft a few
presidential letters to foreign leaders, I want you
to know that this is not what they normally look
like,”
Kelly Magsamen, a former official who worked
under both the Bush and Obama administrations
at the State Department, Pentagon, and
National Security Council, tweeted about the letter.
It also shows that Trump has
personally tried to mediate the conflict in Syria
that he himself kick-started by withdrawing troops
last week, even though on Wednesday he
told reporters that the conflict “has nothing to
do with us.”
“I view the situation on the Turkish
border with Syria to be, for the United States,
strategically brilliant,” the president said in the
Oval Office.
Vice President Mike Pence and
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are on their way to
Turkey now to attempt to negotiate some kind of
ceasefire deal between Erdoğan and Kurdish leaders
— a deal
the Turkish president has vowed not to make.
It’s possible the administration
leaked the letter to the friendly network as a way
to send a message to Ankara before the talks. Trump
also mentioned on Wednesday that the White House
might release the letter.
Regardless of how it got out, the
letter shows that American foreign policy is firmly
in Trump’s hands — and, like it or not, run by his
own unvarnished words. But if Erdoğan is upset about
this whole thing, perhaps he and Trump can smooth it
over on the phone. “I will call you later,” the
commander in chief ends the letter.
This article was originally published by "Vox"-
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