Erdogan has made Turkey NATO's worst ally and he is not a US friend

Washington Times:

The Trump administration has gone to lengths to ease tensions with Turkey, but the effort hasn’t quelled anti-American sentiment that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accused of stoking ahead of elections next year.

While Ankara remains a NATO ally, analysts say, Mr. Erdogan increasingly is yielding to Russia while taking a confrontational stance toward the United States in order to appear stronger in the eyes of Turkish voters.

“People in Washington are not aware the extent to which anti-Americanism has been at the core of Erdogan’s political messaging, especially in the run-up to the presidential elections slated for November 2019 in Turkey,” said Aykan Erdemir, a former opposition member of the Turkish parliament.

Mr. Erdemir, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, says the Turkish president relies on pro-government media to amplify conspiracy theories that Washington’s support of Syrian Kurds is part of U.S. strategy to foment unrest in Turkey, where fears of Kurdish separatism are widespread.

“Combining anti-Americanism with anti-Kurdish sentiment is a winning formula because you can get almost 80 percent of the Turkish public behind the notion that the U.S. and U.S.-backed Kurds are working together in a global conspiracy to undermine Ankara,” he said. “Erdogan knows pushing this as the main existential security threat facing Turkey will play well with voters.”

Mr. Erdemir, who has emerged as a harsh critic of the Erdogan government’s shift toward authoritarianism in recent years, made the comments in an interview with The Washington Times on Sunday, days after Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said the U.S.-Turkey relationship is “at a bit of a crisis point.”
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What is overlooked in Erdogan's argument is that if Turkey had been a responsible ally, the US never would have had to rely on the Kurds in defeating ISIS.  At times it looked like Turkey was actually helping ISIS rather than the coalition to defeat it.   Turkey also made matters worse in Iraq by refusing to allow a US invasion force to attach Saddam's forces from the north.  Given their lack of help, I think Tillerson tends to overstate Turkey's importance to the alliance.  Turkey has also been a conduit not only for ISIS fighters going into Syria but also for ones leaving Syria to attack Europe while pretending to be refugees.  Turkey and NATO would be better off without Erdogan.