As Bibi meets with Trump in DC, Turkey fills the Syrian vacuum
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM/DROPOFLIGHT
Following Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s weeklong trip to the United States, during which he met President Donald Trump, we may glean new insights and perhaps even a timetable for a breakthrough in normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Regardless of how closely the US and Israel align their positions or what demands the Saudis might insist be included in a formal agreement with Israel, another nation is poised to rain on the parade: Turkey.
Most pundits are more worried about the threat Turkey poses militarily to Israel as it gains influence over Syria’s new rebel government. This is certainly an issue on Trump and Netanyahu’s agenda. However, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan views gobbling up Syria as just the first course toward satisfying his insatiable regional appetite to restore the Ottoman Empire from the Nile River to the Black Sea, with Jerusalem at its heart.
Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior Pentagon advisor from 2002 to 2003, was one of the first to warn that Erdogan had been laying the groundwork for what he calls “neo-Ottomanism” since assuming office as Turkey’s prime minister in 2003.
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