“Turkey needs the European Union. Europe is an immensely important source of economic support and direct investment. […But] Erdogan feels that…toughness and militancy gets results. This…makes ‘normalisation’ extremely difficult.”
“That [Egypt is] continuing to stonewall and obfuscate and pursue this course of action [regarding military relations with North Korea] indicates they think they can get away with it, and whatever price will be imposed on them will be bearable.”
“At the core, Erdogan believes the US wants to overturn him, which means he is likely to see sanctions in that light. Moreover, Turkey is far less dependent on the US than it is on Germany and the European Union.”
“In a country where more than 400 people have been arrested for taking anti-war stances on social media, in which non-Muslim populations feel deeply at risk, how could they possibly have said no [to Turkey’s military incursion in Syria]?”
“[T]he Afrin Operation works well for Erdogan politically. It presents him as tough on addressing terrorism and it allows him to stand up against the Americans. Both of these…are genuinely popular across much of the political spectrum.”
“The fact that several of these would-be candidates came from the military was even more apparently threatening to him, and so using a variety of measures…the Egyptian authorities have managed to…disqualify [them] on very shaky grounds.”
“He was erratic, conspiratorial in nature and harbored a lot of anti-American suspicions. He believes that the 2011 uprising was the result of an external conspiracy rather than internal upheaval.”
