Summary

In an editorial in the New York Times last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that the US-Turkey partnership is in jeopardy.

How right he is.

The US-Turkey spat isn’t the result of last week’s bombshell, when President Trump took to Twitter to double sanctions against Ankara. With its dogged inflation, moribund currency, and towering USD-denominated debt, the Turkish economy was already teetering at the brink; President Trump just gave it a shove. Rather, last week’s events only further cement years of drift in US-Turkey relations, and it’s becoming increasingly hard to see how these erstwhile NATO allies will be able to bridge the gap and get back to normalcy under their current leaders.