The U.S. State Department has issued warnings and threats to Erdogan if he follows through on his plan to have a neighborly relationship with Syria.
On February 3, the Turkish interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, blasted the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Jeffry L. Flake, saying, “Take your dirty hands off of Turkey.”
The outrage was prompted after Washington and eight European countries issued travel warnings over possible terror attacks in Turkey.
The U.S. and its western allies have attempted to connect a recent Quran burning in Sweden with travel danger inside Turkey.
Muslim countries worldwide have denounced the burning as hate speech, not free speech, but this has no apparent connection to travel safety issues inside Turkey.
The U.S. travel warning is tantamount to a declaration of economic war on Turkey who is in an economic downturn of its tourism sector, which was 11 % of the GDP in 2019, representing $78.2 billion, and rose to $17.95 billion in the third quarter of 2022, of which 85.7 percent came from foreign visitors.
In 2018, tourism directly accounted for 7.7% of total employment in Turkey.
“Every American ambassador wonders how they can hurt Turkey. This has been one of Turkey’s greatest misfortunes over the years.
It gathers other ambassadors and tries to give them advice. They are doing the same thing in Europe, the American embassy is running Europe,” said Soylu.
Soylu has criticized the U.S. and blames Washington for the 2016 Turkish regime change attempt, and has accused the U.S. of ruling Europe. In foreign policies, the EU follows U.S. directives implicitly.
Source: Strategic Culture
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