David Adesnik is director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Aykan Erdemir, a former member of the Turkish parliament, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Failure to respond to Turkey’s predations would only invite further aggression. The U.S. should continue to work closely with its regional partners in presenting a unified front to deter Turkey’s EEZ gambits. Increased U.S. foreign military sales and continued diplomatic harmonization can strengthen energy security and lawful commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In 2013, Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force, the foreign-operations arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, famously said, “We’re not like the Americans. We don’t abandon our friends.” Trump, like Obama, seems committed to proving the Islamic Republic’s most dangerous commander right.
Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.