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History repeats itself, as Karl Marx once wrote, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. In a farcical return to the chaos that resulted from a December 2018 phone call between the U.S. and Turkish presidents, Donald Trump has once again announced the pullback of U.S. forces in northeastern Syria, sending Washingtons entire policy establishment into damage control mode.

To prove he was not pushed around by or caving into the demands of Turkeys Islamist strongman, Trump then tweeted threats to totally destroy and obliterate the Turkish economy, echoing his tweet to devastate Turkey economically the last time around. So far, the only thing he seems to have destroyed is U.S. credibility in the Middle East and beyond.

Trumps latest move rewards a fellow NATO member for behaving badly, as he has done multiple times before when dealing with Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdogans government has held U.S. citizens and State Department employees hostage, helped Iran evade U.S. sanctions at the height of Washingtons efforts to thwart Tehrans nuclear ambitions between 2012 and 2014, and most recently procured the Russian-made S-400 air defense system despite frequent warnings against doing so.

So far, Erdogan has miraculously walked away without any major diplomatic pushback, sanctions, or fines from the United States owing to an inexplicable leniency that belies Trumps tough talk. Even as the U.S. president was reinforcing his Turkish counterparts sense of impunity, he was selling out the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), comprising Syrian Kurds, Arabs, Syriac Christians, and Yazidis who have been key partners in defeating the Islamic State while sacrificing more than 11,000 of their soldiers in the effort.

Trumps hasty action risks undermining all the gains that U.S. special operations forces and their SDF partners have secured to defeat the Islamic State. A recent report by the U.S. Defense Department inspector general warned that the Islamic State solidified its insurgent capabilities in Iraq and was resurging in Syria. There are further credible reports of Islamic State efforts to replenish its ranks from members held in detention facilities.

Given that these terrorist detainees are dispersed in a number of facilities, some of which are deep in Syrian territory, there is no way that Turkish troops and their proxies can take control of such facilities from the SDF in an orderly fashion. The logical result of the inevitable clashes between Turkey and the SDF will be a redeployment of SDF forces from the detention facilities to the front lines, leading inevitably to mass prison escapes and an Islamic State resurgence. If the Islamic State makes a comeback, triggering attacks not only in the Middle East but also in Europe and the continental United States, this will all be laid rightly at Trumps doorstep.

The humanitarian consequences will be no less worrisome. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom warned in its 2019 annual report that any planned withdrawal from northeastern Syria should be conducted in such a manner that will not negatively impact the rights and survival of vulnerable religious and ethnic minorities, a message the commission reiterated following Trumps latest announcement.

Turkeys Islamist proxies in Afrin, which took control of the area following Turkeys cross-border operation into northern Syria in 2018, have been implicated in numerous human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities in the cityviolations almost certain to be replicated in northeastern Syria.

Erdogans plans for demographic engineering in the region are a further recipe for disaster. The Turkish president announced at the United Nations General Assembly that he intends to settle up to 3 million mainly Arab Syrian refugees in northeastern Syria as part of a sinister attempt to turn Kurdish-majority areas into Arab-majority ones. Such a blatant manipulation of the regional ethnic balance is certain to fuel intercommunal tensions and violence in decades to come, further sowing the seeds of hatred and enmity in a region already seething with more than its fair share of prejudices and grievances.

An important word of caution about the sinister motivations behind Erdogans Syria plans could have come from Turkeys pro-secular opposition bloc, which succeeded in defeating Erdogan in the recent municipal elections in Ankara and Istanbul. But Trumps threats to destroy and obliterate Turkeys economy have effectively gagged the opposition.

Erdogan instead benefits from a rally-round-the-flag effect in advance of an anticipated military incursion into Syria and activation of anti-American sentiment that bolsters a government badly scathed by the recent economic downturn, election defeat, and defections of some of the founding figures of the ruling party. Trumps bewildering rhetoric and policy zigzags have not only hurt the prospects for secular political forces on both sides of the Turkish-Syrian border; the president has also offered a lifeline to struggling Islamists there.

Trumps Syria tactics have hurt the United States as much as its partners. The latest abandoning of U.S. allies has solidified an already widespread belief in the Middle East and beyond that the United States is not a reliable ally. As Russia and Iran offer the Syrian theater as proof that they are reliable partners that will stand by their allies, state and nonstate actors will pivot from Washington toward Moscow and Tehran as part of an attempt to hedge their foreign and security policies.

Trumps willingness to yield in the face of Erdogans threats will create a vacuum that Moscow and Tehran will be only too willing to fill, doing lasting damage to the interests of the United States and its European allies. There is no better time to remind Trump that whats at stake is not just the future of Syria but the fate of the region and Washingtons credibility as an ally.

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Trumps Capitulation to Erdogan Makes America Look Like an ...

Murat Yasa was sure he was going to die.

What had started as a peaceful protest outside the Turkish ambassador's home in Washington two years ago devolved into violence. Yasa, a Kurdish-American activist protesting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's human rights record, was beaten by Turkish security officials in an attack caught on video.

They stomped his head again and again, he recalls, kicking it like a soccer ball. They shouted curses in Turkish. They left him bloodied and bruised broken nose, loose teeth, searing pain across his body and he was rushed to a local emergency room.

The scars linger.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Yasa told NBC News he struggles with memory loss, and a neurologist told him he has brain tissue damage. The sheer outrage of the May 2017 attack foreign bodyguards and Erdogan supporters pummeling U.S. citizens in the nation's capital still infuriates him.

But he will not be deterred. That is why Yasa, 62, plans to return to Washington next month when Erdogan is scheduled to pay another visit to the U.S. on Nov. 13.

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"I feel terrible," Yasa said when asked for his thoughts on Erdogan's visit. "I feel like a truck crashed [into] me, and then an 18-wheeler is going to crash into me again."

"But as long as I breathe, as long as I live, I am not going to give up to the dictators," Yasa later added. "I will always stand up for the innocent people against tyranny."

Yasa suggested the upcoming protest of Erdogan's visit has recently taken on greater urgency. He is deeply angered by Erdogan's incursion in northern Syria and the siege on the Kurdish people and devastated by what he sees as President Donald Trump's betrayal of the Kurds by pulling U.S. forces out of the region.

"This is insane. This is not acceptable," Yasa said. "How could [the Trump administration] give the green light to Turkey to commit genocide against your allies?"

He conceded that returning to the scene of the chaotic melee is not without risk, and he said he fears for the safety of his family, including his children. But he nonetheless feels compelled to stand up to the Turkish regime and to Erdogan himself, whom he called "evil."

A total of 19 people, including 15 identified as Turkish security officials, were indicted by a grand jury in Washington in 2017; charges against 11 people were later dropped, according to The Associated Press.

The security guards, some in dark suits and ties, were caught on video brushing past U.S. law enforcement and attacking a small group of protesters with their fists and feet. They could be seen kicking one woman as she lay on a sidewalk and throwing another woman to the ground.

In one video, Erdogan can be seen looking on as his security guards clashed with the protesters. By the end of the brawl, nine people had been hurt, including Yasa.

The Turkish government has previously blamed the violence on the protesters, who they allege were linked with the PKK, a group the U.S. State Department considers a foreign terrorist organization. Yasa, for his part, denied that he is a member of the PKK, adding that he has "no link" with the group.

Yasa has been politically engaged for much of his life, saying that he was "always protesting" the Turkey government over its treatment of minority groups, including Armenians, and rallied for women's rights in his native country and elsewhere.

He fled Turkey and settled in the United States in 1987, eventually gaining U.S. citizenship in 1992. He started his own flooring and granite company in northern Virginia, where he lives with his family.

He expressed disappointment that Trump and Vice President Mike Pence did not firmly denounce Erdogan, but he said he was heartened that the U.S. House of Representatives voted 397-0 to pass a resolution condemning the violence of 2017.

Yasa emphasized that he has nothing against the Turkish people, adding that several of his Turkish friends were horrified by the video of the beating. The target of his anger and source of his sorrow is Erdogan, who he believes orders far greater atrocities in his own country.

"If he can do this in [Washington]," Yasa said, "imagine what he can do in Turkey."

Daniel Arkin is a reporter for NBC News.

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Murat Yasa was beaten by Erdogan's guards. But he's not ...

Who Is Recep Tayyip Erdogan?

Born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1954, Recep Tayyip Erdogan became involved in politics while attending university. The first Islamist to be elected mayor of Istanbul, he reduced pollution and improved the city's infrastructure, but was imprisoned on charges of inciting religious hatred.Erdogan later served three terms as prime minister, during which time he markedly improved Turkey's economic standing, but drew criticism for perceived power grabs. He was voted the country's president in 2014, and after surviving an attempted military coup in July 2016, he earned reelection two years later.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan was born on February 26, 1954, in the Kasimpasa quarter of Istanbul, Turkey, to parents Ahmet and Tenzile Erdogan. He spent part of his childhood in Rize, where his father worked as a coastguard, before the family returned to Istanbul when he was 13.

Raised without much money, Erdogan sold lemonade and sesame buns on the streets as a teenager. A talented football player, he competed for many years and reportedly drew interest from top clubs, but was prevented from pursuing that path by his father. Erdogan instead attended the religious Istanbul Imam Hatip School, where he becameinvolved with the National Turkish Students Association, and passed the exams to earn a diploma from Eyup High School as well.

Influenced by the teachings of National Salvation Party leader Necmettin Erbakan, Erdogan was elected head of the party's Beyoglu Youth Branch and Istanbul YouthBranch in 1976. The party was dissolved in the wake of a 1980 military coup, and after Erdogan earned a graduate degree from Marmara Universitys Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences in 1981, he worked as an accountant and a manager in the private sector.

Erdogan returned to politics with the formation of the Welfare Party in 1983, becoming the Beyoglu District head in 1984. The following year, he was voted the IstanbulProvincial head and named to the Central Executive Board. Tasked with improving voter turnout, Erdogan was credited for the party's success in the 1989 municipalelections.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994. The first Islamist to serve in this role, he demonstrated his religious commitment by banning alcohol from city-owned cafes. He also successfully tackled the city's water shortage, reduced pollution and improved infrastructure, helping to modernize the country's capital.

Erdogan came under serious fire in December 1997 after publicly reciting a poem which included the lines "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." Charged with violating secularist law and inciting religious hatred, he was forced to step down as mayor and barredfrom public office, and ultimately wound up serving four months in prison in 1999.

His prison sentence complete, Erdogan co-founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001. The AKP claimed a resounding victory in the 2002 parliamentaryelections, and Erdogan soon had his power officially restored thanks to a constitutional amendment that overturned his political ban. He became prime minister ofTurkey on March 9, 2003, and subsequently was reelected to the position twice more.

As prime minister, Erdogan markedly improved Turkey's economic standing. He reined in inflation and encouraged foreign investment, leading to a risein per capita income, stronger credit ratings and close ties with Western allies. However, Erdogan also increasingly became known as an authoritarian leader out to increase thebreadth of his power. In 2013, he had several senior military officials imprisoned for life for plotting to overthrow the AKP, and also ordered the military to crushpeaceful demonstrations at Istanbul's Gezi Park. The following year, after condemning the use of social media, he briefly blocked Turkey's access to Twitter andYouTube.

After reaching his term limits as prime minister, Erdogan became the AKP's candidate in Turkey's first direct election for the presidency, and was inaugurated onAugust 28, 2014. Although the role had previously been more of a ceremonial one, Erdogan indicated his intention to establish new powers as president. His goal wastemporarily impeded when the AKP failed to garner a majority in the 2015 parliamentary elections, but after attempts to form a coalition government faltered, the AKPregained the majority in an election that November.

Mountingunrest boiled over in the form of anattempted military coup on the night of July 15, 2016. Erdogan, who was vacationing with his family, narrowly avoided trouble when his hotel was raided, and successfully escaped to Istanbul. Out of harm's way, he took to the video chat app FaceTime to implore his countrymen to fight the renegade military units. He was largely supported by key government officials and influential figures, and within a few hours the coup, which resulted in more than 400 deaths and another 1,400 people injured, had been quashed.

Erdogan blamed the uprising on followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in exile in the United States, and demanded the cleric's extradition. Along with imprisoning thousands of military personnel, he had tens of thousands police officers, judges, civil servants and teachers suspended, detained or placed under investigation. He then declared a national state of emergency,lending credence to the idea that he would use the experience to oust his known enemies and claim even more power.

Those fears were realized with the narrow passage of a constitutional referendum in April 2017, which eliminated the post of prime minister and gave Turkey's president new executive powers, including the ability to appoint judges and officials.

After Erdogan called for early elections in 2018, opposition parties put up a spirited fight in an attempt to halt his consolidation of power. However, the incumbent earned a reported 53 percent of the vote in the June 24 election, enough to avoid a runoff with the runner-up, Muharrem Ince. And while hisAKP earned less than 50 percent of the parliamentary vote, its alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party ensured a majority coalition there, as well.

That night, with the results still being processed but pointing toward victory, Erdogan delivered a short speech outside one of his Istanbul residences. "It seems the nation has entrusted me with the duty of the presidency, and to us a very big responsibility in the legislature," he said. "Turkey has given a lesson of democracy with a turnout of close to 90 percent. I hope that some will not provoke to hide their own failure."

Among the first steps Erdogan took in his second term was the formation of a response to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum imports. In August 2018, Turkey announced its own tariffs on a string of U.S. goods that included cars and alcohol, while Erdogan delivered a speech in which he called for a boycott of American electronic products.

Erdogan ran afoul of the Trump administration again the following year, after Turkey took advantage of the withdrawal of U.S. troops in northern Syria to push a military operation past promised boundaries and into areas that threatened Kurdish forces. Responding to Trump's threat of sanctions, Erdogan said: "They are pressuring us to stop the operation. They are announcing sanctions. Our goal is clear. We are not worried about any sanctions."

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Recep Tayyip Erdogan - - Biography

Erdogan is playing to an anti-American domestic audience with his nuclear rhetoric, but is highly unlikely to pursue nuclear weapons, said Jessica C. Varnum, an expert on Turkey at Middleburys James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. There would be huge economic and reputational costs to Turkey, which would hurt the pocketbooks of Erdogans voters.

For Erdogan, Ms. Varnum said, that strikes me as a bridge too far.

There is another element to this ambiguous atomic mix: The presence of roughly 50 American nuclear weapons, stored on Turkish soil. The United States had never openly acknowledged their existence, until Wednesday, when Mr. Trump did exactly that.

Asked about the safety of those weapons, kept in an American-controlled bunker at Incirlik Air Base, Mr. Trump said, Were confident, and we have a great air base there, a very powerful air base.

But not everyone is so confident, because the air base belongs to the Turkish government. If relations with Turkey deteriorated, the American access to that base is not assured.

Turkey has been a base for American nuclear weapons for more than six decades. Initially, they were intended to deter the Soviet Union, and were famously a negotiating chip in defusing the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when President John F. Kennedy secretly agreed to remove missiles from Turkey in return for Moscow doing the same in Cuba.

But tactical weapons have remained. Over the years, American officials have often expressed nervousness about the weapons, which have little to no strategic use versus Russia now, but have been part of a NATO strategy to keep regional players in check and keep Turkey from feeling the need for a bomb of its own.

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Erdogans Ambitions Go Beyond Syria. He Says He Wants ...

ISTANBUL A raft of new American sanctions. An embargo on European arms sales. The indictment of a state-owned Turkish bank. Threats to isolate Turkey within NATO. A rise in global sympathy for the Kurdish cause. And the Syrian Army back in northern Syria.

The problems keep escalating for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, whose invasion of Kurdish-held northern Syria last week unraveled already tense relations with American and European partners and radically reshuffled the battle lines and alliances of Syrias eight-year-old Syrian war.

But as challenging as Mr. Erdogans predicament appears from the outside, analysts say, it is only likely to buttress his standing at home, as the fighting fans an already heightened state of nationalist feeling.

It also masks the near-fulfillment of one of the presidents most important foreign policy goals: Breaking the stranglehold of a hostile Kurdish militia on a vast stretch of the border, and the fracturing of the United States alliance with a group that Mr. Erdogan considers an existential threat to the Turkish state.

All of that has made it harder for the opposition to unite against Mr. Erdogan, or even to criticize him, and it has bolstered the presidents narrative that he and Turkey are the victims of an international conspiracy.

Americans, Europeans, Chinese, Arabs all united against Turkey, the front-page of Sozcu, a newspaper usually fiercely opposed to Mr. Erdogan, said on Wednesday. Bring it on.

In the last few weeks, the Turkish national soccer team has backed Mr. Erdogans campaign by giving military salutes at two international matches. Pop singers have expressed their support on social media. Even the head of Turkeys largest art fair emailed its international mailing list to condemn the black propaganda of international media coverage of the military operation.

Overall, this operation has been a success, said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, an analyst who heads the Ankara office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington-based research group.

Turkey has long opposed the influence of a Syrian Kurdish militia, known by its initials as the Y.P.G., since it is the offshoot of a guerrilla movement that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. Turkish officials grew alarmed when the militia took control of pockets of northern Syria in 2012, following a retreat by government forces amid the chaos of the Syrian civil war.

Ankara became particularly concerned when the militia expanded its grip by partnering with the United States military to force the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, from the border region.

To Turkish fury, the United States protected the militia for nearly half a decade, encouraging the group to blur its identity by changing its name and enlisting more non-Kurdish fighters.

But this delicate peace was shattered last week when President Trump ordered American troops to withdraw from the Turkish-Syrian border. That allowed Turkish forces to invade, prompted American ground-forces and their international allies to abandon their bases in the area, and forced the Kurds to request protection from Russian and Syrian government troops.

The intervention by Russia and Syria came far quicker than expected, and will likely stop Mr. Erdogan from creating as large a buffer zone along the border as he previously hoped.

But it nevertheless brings him close to achieving his primary objective, said Mr. Unluhisarcikli.

Whats Turkeys objective? Its to stop the Y.P.G. from controlling territory in northeast Syria, Mr. Unluhisarcikli said. Whether its Turkey doing it or the Syrian regime, the Y.P.G.s control has been loosened.

Mr. Erdogan once hoped to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, but now seems to see Mr. al-Assad as a lesser evil than the Kurdish militia. On Wednesday, he told a gaggle of reporters that he could accept the Assad regime re-entering the previously Kurdish-held city of Manbij, as long as it expelled Kurdish fighters from the area.

We are not very concerned about being in Manbij ourselves, Mr. Erdogan said. We have only one concern: Either Russia or the regime should remove the Y.P.G. from there.

He called for Kurdish fighters battling his troops in northeastern Syria to lay down their weapons and withdraw from the border area this very night.

Mr. al-Assads predecessor and father, Hafez al-Assad, provided Kurdish guerrillas fighting the Turkish state with refuge and space to organize in Syria in the 1980s and 90s, and Mr. Erdogan may fear a similar outcome.

But the younger al-Assad has repeatedly promised to re-establish control over every inch of Syria and few believe he will allow the Syrian Kurds to maintain their current level of autonomy.

Mr. Erdogans authoritarian domestic policies have long been a target of international criticism and unease, but the assault on Kurdish-held Syria has prompted an unusually high level of censure, even by Mr. Erdogans standards.

This week, Mr. Trump raised trade tariffs on Turkish steel, called off negotiations for a new Turkish trade deal worth $100 billion and placed financial sanctions on three Turkish ministers. I am fully prepared to swiftly destroy Turkeys economy if Turkish leaders continue down this dangerous and destructive path, he said in a statement on Monday.

On the same day, the defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, asked NATO members to take collective and individual diplomatic and economic measures against Turkey. On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary Mike Pompeo flew to Ankara to press Mr. Erdogan into a cease-fire.

Several European countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and France, have now imposed embargoes on arms sales to Turkey.

On Tuesday, Volkswagen suspended plans to build a factory that would provide 4,000 jobs in western Turkey, saying it was concerned by the current situation but without explaining further.

Hours later, United States prosecutors in New York announced charges against a Turkish state-owned bank, accusing it of having helped Iran evade American sanctions by transferring billions of dollars on the Iranian governments behalf. As a punishment, prosecutors are pushing for the bank to forfeit an equivalent amount and the situation could hurt the banks ability to make international transactions.

The case may also have implications for Mr. Erdogan personally, as he is accused in the indictment of directing the scheme himself.

But though Turkeys economy is already teetering, some of these measures may turn out to be less effective than they appear.

Maybe people will come up with creative ways of excluding Turkey from NATO, said Amanda Sloat, a former State Department official who oversaw relations with Turkey. But theres no provision about the removal of a NATO member in the NATO founding documents.

The United States has ruled out a Turkish arms embargo, while the European arms embargoes are merely symbolic, said Marc Pierini, a former European Union ambassador to Turkey. Theyre not going to dent in any shape or form the Turkish military, Mr. Pierini added.

The European measures apply only to future sales, blunting their effect on the current operation. And though Germany supplies some of Turkeys tanks, the Turkish military was already more reliant on its U.S.-made tanks, because of pre-existing problems with the German models.

Whats more, the three sanctioned Turkish ministers have no known American assets. The $100 billion trade deal was never taken seriously in the first place. The new tariffs will likely not have much more effect, since Turkish exports to the U.S. are already low because of levies enforced last year.

Even if Congress imposes harsher measures of its own, the Trump administration could slow-walk putting them in place.

And though the economic crisis poses long-term challenges to Mr. Erdogans electoral prospects, in the past he has used external economic threats to boost his short-term popularity, portraying himself as Turkeys only viable bulwark against a sea of foreign troubles.

The war, then, has made it harder for opposition leaders to criticize Mr. Erdogan without being accused of a lack of patriotism.

Even Ekrem Imamoglu, an opposition politician who defeated Mr. Erdogans candidate in recent mayoral elections in Istanbul, and who is perceived as a future rival for the presidency, has been careful to show his strong support for the invasion. In a series of Twitter posts, he described the Kurdish militiamen as a treacherous terror group and said he was praying for the operations success.

Such statements add another obstacle to attempts by Turkeys opposition parties to defeat Mr. Erdogans party.

To win the mayoralty, Mr. Imamoglu required the informal support of a pro-Kurdish party, which typically receives around 10 percent of the national vote and whose supporters helped pull him over the line. But the partys perceived links to the Kurdish militant movement may now make it an electoral liability.

In the medium term, said Mr. Unluhisarcikli, President Erdogan has made it harder for the cohesion of the opposition alliance.

Reporting was contributed by Jack Ewing from Frankfurt; Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels; Ben Hubbard from Dohuk, Iraq; and Carlotta Gall from Nusaybin, Turkey.

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The World Condemns Erdogans War on Kurds. But Turkey ...