Eric Edelman

A joint call for an urgent recalibration of US strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean is made by former US ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman and Aykan Erdemir, a former MP with Turkey's Republican People's Party (CHP) and current director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank, in a newly published report on the region.

Turkey is engaging in “hostage diplomacy” by holding several US and German citizens on seemingly trumped-up terrorism charges as bargaining chips in order to force the US and Germany to extradite Turkish nationals, according to current and former security officials in Europe and the US.

Russia and Turkey carried out their first joint airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria on Wednesday, further expanding their budding military cooperation, the Russian military said.

Russia and Turkey back opposing sides in Syria’s five-year civil war.

Eric Edelman, one of the former U.S. ambassadors to Ankara, never liked this country. My recollection of him while I was working as a diplomatic reporter in Ankara was that he had this bullying attitude coupled with a condescending look. He did not understand the dynamics of Turkey, and ended up no liking it.

Turkish presidential spokesman ?brahim Kal?n slammed on March 11 a newspaper column by two former U.S. ambassadors to Turkey criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.

About a decade ago, the (politically) Western hemisphere enthusiastically volunteered for a political experiment based on generous euphemism for ?moderate? Islamism, unable to see that there is only Islamism and there are only physically more violent forms of Islamism. The West had fallen in love with something that did not exist.

Last week, former U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Eric Edelman published an article in the New York Times titled ?America?s Dangerous Bargain With Turkey.?

This week, an editorial in the same newspaper skeptically described Ankara?s joining of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as ?Turkey?s War of Distraction.?  

Dr. Aykan Erdemir, a former member of the Turkish parliament from 2011 to 2015, has joined the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) as a non-resident fellow, the foundation announced in a written statement on June 9.