Lowell Sun (Massachusetts)
Saturday
Turkey: An unreliable ally
LETTER TO THE EDITOR; Editorials
The revelations from the indictment of Michael Flynn's Turkish business partners expose what has been hidden from the general public — that the autocratic government of Turkey has long been illegally meddling in American domestic politics.
Flynn has now admitted that before he was appointed national security advisor, he was secretly lobbying for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of the world's leading violators of human rights. Turkey plotted with Flynn to kidnap cleric Fethullah Gulen from Pennsylvania despite the fact that for years Erdogan and Gulen were allies conspiring to continue the unacceptable and unjust denial of Turkey's perpetration of the genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I.
Turkey's protests over the despicable murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi are a smokescreen to cover the fact that Turkish jails hold more journalists than any other country on earth. In Syria, Turkey repeatedly undermined the battle to defeat ISIS by bombarding and assaulting America's most dependable ally in the country, the Syrian Democratic Forces, because for Erdogan it is more important to eliminate U.S. allied Kurdish forces than ISIS radicals.
It is well past time for Washington to speak out against the pernicious influence of a Turkish government that has warped policies in Congress, the Pentagon, and the State Department by posing as a reliable ally.
ARA A. JEKNAVORIAN
Chelmsford,
Co-chair,
Armenian National Committee, Merrimack Valley