It is not clear at this stage what effect President Donald Trump’s nomination of Mike Pompeo as secretary of state will have on Turkish-American ties, already strained over a number of seemingly intractable issues.
What is clear, though, is that Ankara is rattled with Trump’s choice. The reason is a tweet by Pompeo during the coup attempt in July 2016 in which he likened Turkey, alongside Iran, to a “totalitarian Islamic dictatorship.”