President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's colorful three-country Latin America tour to Colombia, Cuba and Mexico was cut short for unknown reasons. He was scheduled to leave Mexico on Feb. 14, after visiting the pre-Columbian Teotihuacan pyramids. However, he decided to leave on Feb. 13, prompting the Turkish public to speculate about the real reason.
The official explanation was that he had already completed the political part of his visit and had just canceled the “cultural” part of his visit, declining to go 30 miles outside of Mexico City to Teotihuacan. Whatever the “real reason” behind cutting his tour short — or even if the real reason is the one mentioned — a senior diplomat, who wanted to remain anonymous, told me, “It is a breach of protocol, an anti-protocol act.”