Trump Sends a Bizarre Letter to the President of Turkey
On This Day In 2019
As we’ve discussed on these pages before, Trump apparently enjoyed doing “favors” for his fellow authoritarian leaders around the globe. One prime example was his 2019 decision to unilaterally withdraw our troops from Northern Syria…because Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asked him to.
Trump’s move was widely panned as a disaster. It was clear ahead of time that Erdoğan would simply send in his own troops to fill the void. So his advisors asked him not to do it. Congress asked him not to do it. But, when a clever dictator whispers sweet nothings in his ear, Trump has often turned to putty.
As Lindsay Newman evaluated: “the clear winner of his latest decision is Turkey, which now gets to pursue its key objective of driving out the Kurdish presence along the Turkish-Syrian border and resettling Syrian refugees there. The clear losers are the Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the very fighters who have been critical to the US counterterrorism efforts.”
Perhaps, for once, Trump was embarrassed. Perhaps, for once, when he saw how his ignorance, impulsiveness, and gullibility again led to an undesirable outcome for the United States, he tried walking things back a bit.
How’d he do that? OTDI 2019, Trump wrote Erdoğan a letter directly, pleading with him to change his mind and to not take the land Turkey had been eager to control for a long time.
Did a 5th grader write it?: Trump’s letter was particularly desperate, reading like a child trying to convince a parent, rather than an official communication from the president of the United States. Sample quotes include these words of eloquent statecraft:
"Let’s work out a good deal!”
"Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!”
“I will call you later.”
So guess what Erdoğan did. At those inspiring words from our Leader of the Free World, he promptly got on the phone, called his troops back, and sought an international agreement to resolve the endless war in Syria.
Nah. Actually, Erdoğan gave Trump’s letter all the respect it deserved. After reading it, he literally simply threw the letter directly in the garbage. And, yet again, another foreign leader laughed at Donald John Trump.
Dive Deeper
The Guardian covers the incident
PBS notes “Bipartisan House vote condemns Trump’s withdrawal from Syria”
Chatham House evaluates Trump's missteps