Erdogan impatient to charge ahead in Syria as Ankara sizes up Pompeo
The US president's choice for his new secretary of state comes at an inconvenient time for Erdogan’s plans to capitalize on Turkey’s victory over the US-allied Syrian Kurdish militia in Afrin.
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.”
