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The threatening language of the United States will not benefit anyone, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, as relations between the NATO allies soured over the case of a US pastor jailed in Turkey on terrorism charges.

Speaking to reporters in Ankara, Erdogan said Turkey would not make compromises regarding the independence of the judiciary, and said the remarks of the evangelical Zionist mentality in the United States was unacceptable.

He also said his foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, would hold talks with US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting in Singapore.

Relations between the two NATO allies have spiraled into a full-blown crisis over the trial of Christian pastor Andrew Brunson, who was held for 21 months in a Turkish prison until his transfer to house arrest last week a move Washington dismissed as insufficient.

Erdogans remarks come a day after a Turkish court rejected an appeal for Brunson to be released from house arrest during his trial on terrorism charges, his lawyer said, in a case that has raised the threat of US sanctions against Ankara.

US President Donald Trump threatened last week to impose large sanctions on Turkey unless it frees the pastor, who is accused of helping the group Ankara says was behind a failed military coup in 2016.

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Erdogan: US Threatening Language Will Not Benefit Anyone ...

As President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tightened his stranglehold over Turkey and Turkish society, any elements of pragmatism that marked his first years in office have evaporated, supplanted by ego and ideology.

Erdogans ego is readily apparent. Erdogan has illegally acquired preserved forests and built palaces that dwarf Versailles, let alone the White House. From his early days as prime minister, he conflated himself with the state and considered any criticism of himself and his policies to be illegal. Turkeys courts soon grew full of cases involving journalists, cartoonists, and public intellectuals who suggested Erdogans policies were misguided or wrong. When top aide Egemen Bagis was caught on tape mocking the Quran, Erdogan cared less about his sacrilege than about a man smoking in a cafe after Erdogan condemned the habit.

Such is the case of a leader who increasingly sees himself as Gods equal.

But the world has always been full of self-absorbed leaders: Saddam Hussein ordered Babylon rebuilt with bricks stamped with testaments to his greatness. Kim Jong Un imprisons those who do not adequately cry for the memory of his father. Hugo Chavezs supporters likened him to Jesus. While an order of magnitude less megalomaniacal, Barack Obamas critics made a sport of counting how many times the president referred to himself in his speeches and his staff famously inserted talk of Obama into the White House biographies of almost all past presidents.. As for President Trump, even his supporters must acknowledge that tremendous ego is part of his brand.

What makes Erdogan particularly dangerous is ideology: He famously promised to raise a religious generation. Theres nothing wrong with religion per se, but Erdogan confuses Islam with Islamism and traditional Turkish interpretations with those more aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogans interpretation of Islam promotes not tolerance, but its opposite. Furthermore, in a complex region where identities are shaped by a number of factors (ethnicity, education, and family, for example) Erdogan increasingly refuses to tolerate anyone who does not prioritize his own narrow interpretation of Islam over any other personal priorities.

This is where diplomats, analysts, and Erdogan apologists went wrong with regard to Erdogans policy toward the Kurds. True, Erdogan reached out on several occasions earlier in his political career to suggest rapprochement with the Kurds. He even resurrected Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Ocalan from political oblivion by entering into secret talks which, even if not successful, made Ocalan the indispensable Kurd and transformed him from a prisoner who embarrassed himself in his post-capture confessions into a Kurdish Nelson Mandela.

But behind the headlines, there was one commonality in Erdogans outreach: an implicit demand the Kurds prioritize Islam over their own ethnic identity. This is why Erdogan imprisoned Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP). Erdogan was willing to allow Demirtas and the HDP to operate openly so long as they supported his Islamist agenda. When it became clear they would not, he ordered Demirtas and other top HDP leaders imprisoned on dubious charges.

There is an irony to Erdogans pattern of punishing Kurds for being insufficiently Islamist: While Kurds often date their nationalist struggle back to the early uprisings that both challenged and marked Mustafa Kemal Ataturks early efforts to consolidate his own dictatorial control over Turkey, the spark for many early Kurdish uprisings was Ataturks abolishment of the caliphate and his desire to separate mosque and state. But then again, Erdogan is the anti-Ataturk, an Islamist instead of a secularist who seeks to extricate Western liberalism from Turkish society rather than promote it.

As the Kurds have refused to subordinate their ethnic and cultural rights to Erdogans agenda, he has embarked on what increasingly appears to be a campaign of ethnic cleansing, if not genocide. Consider just his recent actions.

Erdogan seeks credit because Turkey hosts more Syrian refugees than any other country. But not all refugees are created equal. Turkey is implementing a broader strategy: Just as Syrian President Bashar Assad plays a demographic game to get Sunnis to flee his country to lower their proportion relative to the rest of Syrian population, Erdogan is offering many of those Sunni refugees Turkish citizenship so long as they settle in traditionally Alevi or Kurdish areas. His goal: Erase the Kurdish character in the heart of those areas, which have traditionally been the Kurdish homeland. Erdogans treatment of the Yezidis underlines the point: Turkish authorities refuse to even register them as refugees, thus denying them the ability to access emergency services. Simply put, he hopes Sunni Islamists stay and any and all non-Sunnis or non-Muslims go.

Sometimes, the erasure of Kurdish communities is more deliberate. While Western governments wrung their hands over the gratuitous Russian, Iranian, and Syrian decimation of Aleppo, once Syrias largest city, Turkeys destruction of Sur, Cizre, and Nusaybin was just as wanton and deliberate. And then theres the Ilisu Dam: Not only has it submerged the millennia-old town of Hasankeyf, a Kurdish architectural and cultural treasure, but it also threatens to starve Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan of much-needed (and legally owed) water.

Finally, there is the case of Afrin, the district of Syria that was controlled and governed by Kurds until Turkish forces invaded for the stated purpose of eradicating terrorism, never mind that the Turkish government was unable to cite a single terrorist incident originating in Afrin. Erdogans policy in Afrin has been unapologetic ethnic cleansing and slaughter. Turkish forces and Islamist proxies in Syria have not only killed at least 10,000 Kurds and, according to counts by local organizations, drove 180,000 Kurdish residents out of their homes, but they also settled Sunni Arabs from elsewhere in Syria and Iraq to prevent any return. In short, Erdogan is doing to Kurds in Syria what Saddam Hussein did to the Kurds in Kirkuk.

Genocide is a term too often misused and conflated with ethnic cleansing. But while Ataturks Turkey tolerated Kurds so long as they subordinated their cultural identity to the Turkish constitution, Erdogans hatred goes further. Both Erdogans rhetoric and that of Dogu Perincek, today the intellectual leader of the Turkish military, increasingly appears to fulfill the various definitions of genocide enshrined in the Genocide Convention and the Rwanda Media Case.

Erdogan benefits and always has benefited from officials who deny reality for the sake of diplomatic nicety or wishful thinking. In the last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis provide just the most recent examples. Its time to call a spade a spade, however. As Erdogan plots his future course, its increasingly likely he will deserve not honors and accolades, but a place in the docket at The Hague.

Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.

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Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan doubles down on genocide

ISTANBULMuharrem Ince was having a good week. The boisterous, silver-haired Ince is the main opposition candidate running against Turkeys longtime leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan for president of Turkey. He was speaking to a crowd in the overwhelmingly ethnic Kurdish town of Van on June 4. And he was letting the incumbent have it.

Ince played a video of Erdogan giving a speech to a Kurdish audience the day before, then suddenly stopping and leaving the podium when his teleprompter malfunctioned.

"Those who speak from the teleprompter cannot solve the Kurdish issue, Ince said. Those who speak from the heart can."

Erdogan called the snap June 24 elections in April, likely hoping to catch his opponents off guard and consolidate power as president following a referendum last year that grants new powers to the head of state and transforms the nation of 83 million from a parliamentary to a presidential system.

The election comes at a time when Turks and international observers have grown worried about Erdogans arrogation of power, especially after a failed July 2016 coup attempt that ignited a crackdown by the president against opponents, journalists and civil society. Since then, Turkey has been governed under emergency law. Thousands of people have been arrested, tens of thousands purged from the civil service, and the press severely restricted. After these elections were announced, Erdogans opponents initially feared the president would steamroll his opponents to consolidate even more power.

But Turkeys embattled opposition for once has failed to follow the script. Three important opposition parties have joined together with a smaller party to form a block that includes liberals, Islamists, and nationalists, and they have pursued a strategy to woo the minority Kurds who are seen by many analysts as the lynchpin of the elections.

Both Ince and Meral Aksener, the elegant auburn-haired female leader of the new nationalist party called Iyi, are charismatic on the stump, taking square aim at Erdogan, who will be running for reelection on the same day as voters decide on a new parliament. Their alliance includes the Islamist Felicity Party, which is led by one of Erdogans former fellow travelers, and another minor party.

All the major opposition parties appear to be coordinating strategies to energize their bases and maximize their shares of seats in parliament against the ruling Justice and Development Party, known as the AKP, while seeking to deny Erdogan an outright majority in the presidential race in order to trigger a July 8 runoff.

The opposition has been rejuvenated, says Sinan Ulgen, a Turkey specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Now the opposition is driving the agenda. In the past it was the Erdogan and the AKP. Erdogan is still most likely to win. But there is enough reason to think that the outcome is far from being pre-ordained.

The election is the first since the referendum last year and will immediately trigger the changes, transforming Turkeys government by eliminating the post of prime minister and shifting authorities between parliament and the executive. Critics say the new system will be more autocratic, giving the president too much power, while Erdogans supporters say it will make the government more democratic and accountable.

Truth is, no ones quite sure how the new system will operate in practice. But anxiety over a potential watershed moment in Turkeys political history has galvanized Erdogans opponents.

For once Turkeys opposition parties are trying to break out of their various bubbles. Ince, the secularist, is noting that his sister wears the hijab and that he doesnt oppose religious piety. Aksener, head of a political trend traditionally hostile to Kurdish aspirations, has called for allowing the jailed Kurdish presidential candidate, Selahattin Demirtas, out of prison. Felicity, the Islamist party, holds campaign events featuring music and dancing.

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To be sure, Erdogan remains Turkeys most popular politician, and not just because his fiery fusion of Islamist and nationalist populism appeals to a broad swathe of voters. Over the 16 years that Erdogan and the AKP have dominated Turkish politics, the countrys GDP has tripled, pulling poor, rural Turks into the ranks of the urban middle class. His path to winning a majority of votes appears far clearer than that of the opposition. AKP members and supporters say they are content to run on their track record, including Erdogans ability to generate giant public works projects like airports and hospitals.

The opposition doesnt have a great vision or clear vision for what they will do; they dont promise any hope to people, Harun Armagan, an AKP spokesman, told The Daily Beast. We will work for a society where everybody will able to go to university, get the best health care. We are working for nuclear power plants to make 100 percent of Turkeys energy produced here.

Polls show Erdogan winning in a head-to-hand match with Ince, the candidate of the secular liberal Peoples Republican Party, known as the CHP, which is Turkeys second largest party. But its only a slight majority. Many Turks have been concerned about Erdogans heavy-handed rule over the last five or six years. Plus, Turkeys economy has been faltering, with the lira hitting all-time lows and inflation at double digits, burdening consumers in Erdogans base.

Theyve stumbled because the economic numbers are bad, said Aaron Stein, a Turkey specialist at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. Life is more expensive. The government blames outside powers for the troubles. But people are savvy enough to understand the government is largely responsible.

In contrast to his usual energetic, combative image, the 64-year-old Erdogan appears tired and easily flustered on the campaign trail, as shown by the teleprompter mishap. In the past hes been blessed with colorless opponents who made him look good. His main rival in 2014, Ekmeleddin hsanolu, was a bland chemist who refused to hold rallies during the holy month of Ramadan. Even then Erdogan won with less than 52 percent of the vote. The referendum last year adopting a presidential system passed by about the same margin.

Of course, Erdogan may lose, Veli Agbaba, a CHP lawmaker and party leader, told The Daily Beast. At the end of 16 years there is an AKP that is old, outdated and cannot offer anything new to the public. All they do is promise a bad copy of our election manifesto.

In Ince, the president has met a worthy opponent, a streetfighter whos 10 years younger and has roots in the same rough Black Sea town of Rize that Erdogans family comes from. Hes such a shot in the arm for the oppositioncharismatic, a good speaker, said Stein. He attacks Erdogan on substantive issues.

Aksener, 61, also plays a vital role. She broke away from the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, after its leader Devlet Baheli aligned with Erdogan. She could pull nationalist voters away from the president's camp. The Felicity party gives quavering pious voters queasy about Erdogans authoritarian tendencies an excuse to vote against him.

Notwithstanding the fact its leader is in jail, the Peoples Democratic Party, or HDP, which draws Kurdish and leftist votes, will be key. Demirtas, a brash and outspoken 45-year-old, was locked up in November 2016, accused of supporting armed Kurdish separatists in their decades-long war against the Turkish state. So he is unable to campaign himself except through brief social media appearances. Erdogan also competes for the votes of pious and traditional Kurds, so whether and how they vote will be a crucial factor in the election outcome.

For the opposition to deny the AKP a majority in parliament, under current rules the Kurdish-led HDP likely needs to win more than 10 percent of the vote, which would allow it to form a bloc in parliament.

Kurds are the ones that will determine the outcome, said an analyst at one research organization, who spoke on condition she not be identified. The rest of the vote are consolidated. But the Kurdsno one knows which way they will sway.

Opposition candidates see this election as the best chance they have to weaken Erdogan, if not defeat him, by at least snatching away control of parliament. Opposition parties have promised a return to the parliamentary system, bolstering of democratic institutions, and an end to Turkeys combative regional role and what they describe as Erdogans divisive domestic policies. Askener, who has hired Google AdWords to promote her candidacy and the party, has promised among other things to lift Erdogans outlawing of Wikipedia.

Erdogan politics, which is constantly fighting both inside and outside, will end, said Agbaba, the CHP lawmaker. We will bring about social peace among the divided sections of our country, and we will repair our neighbors and international relations.

Erdogan supporters acknowledge recent economic troubles, but say theyre confident that voters will continue to trust the president based on his lengthy track record. Erdogan has been either president or prime minister of Turkey since 2003, and previously served as the highly popular mayor of Istanbul, the countrys commercial and cultural heart. Armagan, of the AKP, said that volunteers flood the partys offices asking to help out with the elections. He dismissed the oppositions gestures toward embattled groups, including Kurds, that the AKP has sought to draw into politics over the years by addressing mundane concerns such as irrigation in rural areas and housing costs.

The strategy the opposition has is very cheap, he said. They think they will get the pious vote if they have a candidate who wears hijab, that if you put up a Kurdish candidate you get the Kurdish vote. Its like a white American saying, I have black friends.

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Can Voters Bring Down Turkey's Erdogan?

Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the U.S. not to impose sanctions against his government over the ongoing imprisonment of an American pastor accused of espionage and terror-related charges.

Andrew Craig Brunson, 50, was arrested in December 2016 and held in a Turkish prison until he was released to home detention last week. The pastor, who is originally from Black Mountain, N.C., has lived in Turkey for 23 years and led Izmir Resurrection Church.

Late Saturday, Turkish media quoted Erdogan as saying that Washington "cannot make Turkey back down with sanctions."

"The U.S. should not forget that unless it changes its attitude, it will lose a strong and sincere partner like Turkey," warned Erdogan, who is on an official visit to southern Africa this week.

Brunson was detained in the aftermath of a failed 2016 coup on charges of "committing crimes on behalf of terror groups without being a member" and espionage. His He faces a prison sentence of up to 35 years if he is convicted on both counts at the end of his ongoing trial.

On Thursday, President Trump announced possible sanctions against Turkey -- a member of NATO -- over its treatment of Brunson. On Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence told Fox Business Network's "Sunday Morning Futures" that Brunson's release to house arrest "is just not good enough."

"Pastor Andrew Brunson is an innocent man. Hes a man of profound Christian faith, who has ministered in Turkey for more than 20 years ... There's no credible evidence of any wrongdoing against him," Pence said. "The United States of America is prepared to bring sanctions against Turkey until Pastor Andrew Brunson is free."

Erdogan denied speculation that there had been an agreement to swap Brunson for Turkish citizens being held abroad, particularly 27-year-old Ebru Ozkan. Ozkan had been detained by Israel on terror-related charges, but was deported this month.

The Turkish leader previously linked Brunson's return to the U.S. to the extradition of Fethullah Gulen. Ankara blames Gulen for the coup attempt, while the cleric denies involvement.

Erdogan also warned that Turkey would seek international arbitration if the United States refused to deliver F-35 fighter jets in retaliation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Turkey leader Erdogan warns US over sanctions threat in ...

President Recep Tayyip Erdoganwarned the US in comments published Sunday that sanctions would not force Ankara to "step back" after Donald Trump threatened to punish Turkey if a US pastor was not freed.

"You cannot make Turkey take a step back with sanctions," Erdogan said in his first comments since relations soured after Trump threatened the measures on Thursday if Pastor Andrew Brunson was not released.

"The US should not forget that it could lose a strong and sincere partner like Turkey if it does not change its attitude," he was quoted as saying by Hurriyet daily.

"The change of attitude is Trump's problem, not mine," he told journalists during a visit to South Africa, calling the US threats "psychological warfare".

Relations between the NATO allies have worsened over the jailing of Brunson, who ran a Protestant church in the Aegean city of Izmir.

He was held in a Turkish jail for almost two years on terror charges but was placed under house arrest on Wednesday.

Trump on Thursday hit back at the move, calling for his immediate release and warning that the US would impose "large sanctions on Turkey for their long time detainment" of Brunson.

Ties had already been strained over multiple issues including Washington's support of a Syrian Kurdish militia which Turkey views as a terrorist group and the failure to extradite the Pennsylvania-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen.

Erdogan in September suggested Turkey could free Brunson if the US handed over Gulen -- an offer brushed off by Washington.

Ankara accuses Gulen of ordering the 2016 failed overthrow of Erdogan, a claim he strongly denies.

The Washington Post on Friday reported a deal between Ankara and Washington was made to secure the release of a Turkish woman imprisoned in Israel in exchange for the freedom of Brunson.

Ebru Ozkan, 27, had been held for over a month by Israel on charges of passing hundreds of dollars to a "terrorist" group, but she returned to Turkey on July 16.

The newspaper said the agreement was "personally sealed" by Trump but fell apart when Brunson was transferred to house arrest.

Erdogan addressed the claims, stressing that Turkey had "never made Pastor Brunson a bargaining chip."

However, he said Ankara had asked for Washington's help in securing Ozkan's return home.

"But we didn't say: 'In return for this, we will give you Brunson'. Nothing like this was discussed," Erdogan insisted.

Brunson risks up to 35 years in jail if found guilty of charges of carrying out activities on behalf of two groups deemed by Turkey to be terror organisations -- the Gulen movement and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Brunson rejects the accusations while US officials have repeatedly insisted the pastor is innocent.

Temperatures were further raised when the US threatened in June to block the delivery of F-35 stealth jets to Turkey if Ankara buys Russia's S-400 air defence system.

But Erdogan suggested Turkey would not sit idly by if this happened.

"We told (the US): 'If you don't give them, there is something called international arbitration. We will seek international arbitration'," he said.

Another source of tension is the prison sentence of 32 months for deputy director general of Turkish lender Halkbank Mehmet Hakan Atilla convicted of plotting to help Iran evade US sanctions on billions of dollars of Iranian oil proceeds.

Turkish officials insist Atilla is innocent but Halkbank still faces a penalty from the US Treasury.

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Erdogan: Turkey Will Not Back Down Due to US Sanctions ...