After Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to suspend Operation Peace Spring against Kurdish forces in Syria in talks with US officials Oct. 17, US President Donald Trump was quick to express his admiration for the Turkish leader. “I just want to thank and congratulate President Erdogan. He’s a friend of mine, and I’m glad we didn’t have a problem because, frankly, he’s a hell of a leader, and he’s a tough man,” Trump said after his emissaries, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, went to Ankara and talked Erdogan into a temporary cease-fire a week after he had launched the campaign. 

Trump also called Erdogan a “strong man,” but that was certainly not in the sense of “autocrat” (strongman) — it was more praise. “He’s a strong man, and he did the right thing and I really appreciate it, and I will appreciate it in the future,” Trump said, adding that Erdogan would travel to Washington on Nov. 13 on Trump's invitation. 

A week later, following the Oct. 22 deal Erdogan reached with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a safe zone to be clear of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), Trump removed the sanctions he had slapped on Turkey over the operation. The sanctions were already of token significance, designed to appease criticism that Trump had given a green light to Turkey’s military campaign and abandoned the YPG, the chief US ally in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. 

That Trump has a soft spot for “strongmen” of the likes of Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is something that the whole world has realized by now, given the ties he has fostered with such leaders in his three years in the White House. Yet Trump’s affinity for Erdogan — reflected also in the “candid” tone of his Oct. 9 letter to the Turkish leader — is hardly descriptive of the entirety of Turkish-US relations.