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Despite being a member of NATO, Mr Erdogan has agitated fellow member states with his foreign policy, but his feelings towards the group of nations were previously positive. Dr Simon Waldman told Express.co.uk: Before, Turkeys position was that it should harness its relations wherever it has them, so in the Middle East it should have strong ties, strong ties with Europe and strong ties with NATO.

That is what gives Turkey its strengths, having as little issues with its neighbours as possible as well as cultural engagement.

However, the attempted coup in 2016 aimed at ousting Mr Erdogan from power, has left the Turkish President with bitterness towards some Western countries as he believes they assisted the Gulen movement in its efforts to remove him from the Presidential Palace.

Expert in Turkish politics, Dr Waldman continued: But then there is the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016, from the perspective of Erdogan this is a personal attempt against him, and he thinks where are the Gulen movement, the architects of the coup, from? oh it has bases in the US.

What did NATO give Turkey, where was NATO in the post-Saddam Hussein gulf war when Turkey came under threat? Where did NATO help after the Iraq invasion when the fallout reached Turkey? Where was the help when there was a Kurdish insurgency?

And who were the officers directing the coup, many of them earned their stripes in NATO- so this distrust of NATO starts to kick in.

During the coup, NATOs F-16 fighter jets were used by Turkish anti-government pilots to bombard the Parliament in the capital of Ankara.

READ MORE:Erdogan risks fallout as Syria rant to spark Trump and Putin fury

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Why Erdogan will never trust NATO amid Putin missile deal - Express.co.uk

Turkish President Erdogan said during a news conference that he had returned the letter President Donald Trump sent him last month. USA TODAY

WASHINGTON Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a White House news conference Wednesday that he had returned the letter President Donald Trump sent him last month warning him not to be a "tough guy" as his military prepared to invade Kurdish territory in northern Syria.

"This letter was re-presented to Mr. President this afternoon," Erdogan said when asked why he ignored Trump's advice and proceeded with the military incursion.

"We gave back the letter that we have received," he repeated at the end of his response, apparently rejectingreports he had thrown the letter in the trash.

Trump wrote the letter advising Erdogan to take a diplomatic approach to the situation amid an uproar over his decision to pull U.S. troops out of the area, paving the way for Turkish forces to advance.

'A big fan': Trump welcomes Turkey's Erdogan despite bipartisan concern over Syria attack

Erdogan had frequently expressed his desire to take military action against the Kurds in the region, whom he considersterrorists allied with Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey. But U.S. forces acted as a buffer between Turkey and the Kurds,whoseSyrian Democratic Forces lost 11,000 fighters battlingagainst the Islamic State alongside American troops.

Republican and Democratic lawmakersdecried Trump's sudden decision to pull out of the area after an Oct. 6 phone call with Erdogan, warning it paved the way for the slaughter and "ethnic cleansing" of an ally, emboldened Iran and Russia, and opened the door to an ISIS resurgence.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a normally staunch Trump supporter, said the move to abandon a U.S. ally was "irresponsible" and a "stain on America's honor," though he later tempered his criticism after Trump agreed to leave some U.S. troops to protect the area's oil fields.

Who are the Kurds and what does less U.S. troops in the region mean for the war against ISIS? We explain. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

'A reckless gamble': Four reasons critics decry Trump's 'impulsive' Syria withdrawal

In the Oct. 9 letter, Trump told Erdogan, "Let's work out a good deal!" Hesaid the Turkish president did not "want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy," in an apparent threat to apply sanctions if Erdogan went ahead with his attack on the Kurds.

"Don't let the world down. You can make a great deal," Trump wrote. He said Abdi was "willing to negotiate with you, and he is willing to make concessions that they would never have made in the past."

"History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way," Trump said. "It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool!"

After receiving the letter, Erdogan told reporters that it "did not go hand in hand with political and diplomatic courtesy."

"Of course, we haven't forgotten it. It would not be right for us to forget it," Erdogan said last month.

On Wednesday, Erdogan took issue with the letter's suggestion of using Abdi as an "interlocutor." Referring to him by his given name,Ferhat Abdi Sahin, Erdogan said Adbi was a terrorist"instrumental in the killing of hundreds of Turkish civilians."

The U.S. brokered a cease-fire between the Kurds and the Turks, which Trump said is "holding very well," but the SDF says clashes continue with armed groups supported by Turkey. On Wednesday, the SDF shared video on Twitter of what it said were Turkish attacks on villages.

The Kurdish group says more than 500 civilians have been killed since Turkey's military incursion began and that more than 300,000 people have been displaced.

In light of Erdogan's actions in Syria, several lawmakers objected to Trump hosting him at the White House, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said he shared his "colleagues' uneasiness at seeing President Erdogan honored at the White House."

Trump was less concerned about such appearances and declared himself "a big fan" of Erdogan, who he said has a "great relationship with the Kurds."

Contributing: Deirdre Shesgreen, David Jackson, John Fritze, Michael Collins and Courtney Subramanian

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so that in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat Genesis 8:4 (The Israel Bible)

President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Facebook)

Rumors circulated that Turkish president Rediep Tayyip Erdogan died following a heart attack on Monday after a report of this inAlraees News. He is currently 65 years old. Doctors were reportedly fighting to save his life.The site Arab Turk quoted a presidential source saying that the rumors of his death are unfounded.

Over the past several hours on Monday, social media sites have reported that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan died, following a heart attack. The presidential presidential palace in Ankara, Turkey has remained silent on the matter.

His name, Erdogan is a leading search engine keyword on Google, following rumors of his death that have been circulating on the internet.

Recep Tayyip Erdoan was born 26 February 1954 and is the 12th and currentPresident of Turkeyas of 2014.

On Friday, BreakingIsraelNews revealed that an ancient esoteric Jewish source who predicted that the lunar eclipse that passed over Jerusalem last Tuesday night which portends the sudden death of a sultan.

Erdoan visitedCairoon 12 September 2011, soon after Turkey hadbooted Israeli ambassadors, severing all diplomatic relations with Israel due to Israels refusal to apologize for theGaza flotilla raid.In the raid, eight Turkish nationals and one Turk-American were killed.

It is believed that the rumors were started after Kurds entered the Hebrew language Wikipedia gave a date to the death of Erdogan, distributed a false rumor via social media. An investigation revealed that Erdogan is on vacation. This was reported from Turkey to Israelis who examined the issue. Israel immediately made sure to correct the mistake in Wikipedia and blocked access to the value of Erdoan in Wikipedia that no one can enter and write something as long as the subject has not been tested.

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Rumor Spreading on Social Media: Turkish President Erdogan ...

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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