Limiting the Problems Created by Turkish President Erdogan

Description

Is Turkey Redeemable? The debate is over. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is no friend of the United States, Israel, or the West. Have two decades of incitement and bureaucratic reform made Turkey’s Islamist transformation permanent? Policy analysts will discuss what U.S. policy towards Turkey should be: Co-option, containment, or coercion? Should the United States designate Turkey as a state sponsor of terrorism? Is it possible to expel Turkey from NATO, and if not, what other options exist? Can Turkey be a force for stability in the region, or will it always be a spoiler? As many in Washington, Europe, and NATO continue to calibrate Turkey policy to wishful thinking rather than reality, what more can be done?

Sam Brownback served as Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom from February 2018 to January 2021. He served as governor of Kansas from 2011 to 2018. Prior to that he represented his home state in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. While a member of the Senate, he worked actively on the issue of religious freedom in multiple countries and was a key sponsor of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. Ambassador Brownback currently serves as co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit and is a senior fellow at Global Christian Relief. He is also chairman of the National Committee for Religious Freedom

Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and an expert on Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy. He is also an associate professor of National Security Studies at Marine Corps University (MCU). Prior to joining MCU, Sinan was the executive director of the Institute of Turkish Studies, based at Georgetown University (2011-2020). He continues to author scholarly articles, opinion pieces, and book chapters on contemporary Turkish politics and foreign policy and appears regularly on various media outlets.

Michael Rubin is the MEF Director of Policy Analysis at as well as senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Middle Eastern countries, particularly Iran and Turkey. His career includes time as a Pentagon official, with field experiences in Iran, Yemen, and Iraq, as well as engagements with the Taliban prior to 9/11. Mr. Rubin has also contributed to military education, teaching U.S. Navy and Marine units about regional conflicts and terrorism. His scholarly work includes several key publications, such as Dancing with the Devil and Eternal Iran. Rubin earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in history and a B.S. in biology from Yale University.

Presented on May 14, 2024 in Washington, D.C.