The SETA FoundationVerified account

Mike Doran: “When the dust all settles, we want the Turks to work within our framework.”

Mike Doran: “I was very disturbed by the US reaction when Turkey shot down the Russian fighter in 2015. The Americans and NATO basically defined that as a bilateral Turkish-Russian problem.“

Mike Reynolds on S400: “There has been a thought in Turkey that they are too dependent on the West for arms. They wanted to diversify their arms supplier so they don’t have to rely on only the US. They also wanted to demonstrate that they have other options.”

Mike Reynolds: “No one has been more involved in the Kurdish question than Russia. This has given Russia a great deal of leverage over Turkey.”

Mike Doran: “Turks have to recognize that there is this politics in America that nobody has control of.”

Mike Doran: “I don’t think that President Erdogan would be unjustified if he thought that some people who were calling for sanctioning Turkey were really calling for regime change.”

Mike Reynolds: “Turkey and Erdogan are not one in the same. With the recent elections, we saw that democracy has not died in Turkey. I don’t understand the attitude in Washington that we should burn our bridge with Turkey.”

Mike Reynolds: “Not only did we turn a blind eye, but we started to train and give arms to the PKK.”

Mike Reynolds: “I think it was the right thing to do to get out of northeast Syria.”

Mike Doran: “I do understand the sense of betrayal. I don’t share it, but I don’t know where this outrage was when Russia and Iran were bombing bakeries in Syria.”

Mike Doran: “We built a huge skyscraper on a fault line. And then when the earth started shaking, we started blaming everybody else.”

Mike Doran: “The bottom line for Donald Trump is that if he actually comes to a solution that solves Erdogan’s political demands, that would require him to deploy many more troops. This is an untenable dilemma for the president.”

Mike Doran: “There was an implicit bargain here. Not just that we would allow the PKK to maintain its relationship with Russia and Iran. We let them get involved in the political project.”

Mike Doran: “Obama’s entire vision of the Middle East was to minimize the friction on the ground with the Iranians....because he was negotiating the JCPOA.”

Mike Doran: “We need to seek to account for our humanitarian concerns within the right structural context.”

Mike Doran: “I don’t know how Trump and Erdogan are going to play their hands. The politics of this, which are so bitter on both sides, have the potential of driving a wedge between us that could last many years. The two sides should see that they share more than they realize.”

Mike Doran: “My larger concern is the politics of this whole episode. It’s hard to remember an issue in foreign policy that became so politicized and divided the US from one of its own partners.”