Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2019, illustration by Mother Jones; Peter Nicholls/AFP/Getty
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As Donald Trump seeks to become a dictator for a day, he asks: “Are you better off now than when you were president?” Great question! To help answer that question, the Trump Files series delves into subsequent events that occurred during the 45th president’s time in office that Americans may have forgotten — or wish they had.
Five years ago, Donald Trump asked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to go ahead and invade Syria, an unexpected capitulation to personal pressure from the Turkish strongman that upended US policy, allowing Turkey to launch attacks on Kurdish fighters seen as They are strong allies of the United States.
Trump’s green light to Erdogan during a phone call on October 6, 2019, forced US forces in Syria to hastily flee positions near the Turkish border and shocked Washington, sparking bipartisan condemnation of the president’s decision.
Amnesty International accused the Turkish forces that invaded the region of showing “a shameful disregard for civilian lives, and committed serious violations and war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful attacks that led to the death and injury of civilians.” News reports said that at least 70 civilians were killed while hundreds of thousands of people were displaced by the invasion.
Approving the invasion was one of the various ways Trump helped Erdogan while he was in office. Trump intervened with the Justice Department to help Turkey’s national bank, Halkbank, which was accused of helping Iran evade US sanctions. Prosecutors said the bank helped finance Iran’s nuclear weapons program. A witness in the case said that the case against the bank indicates the involvement of Erdogan’s allies who allowed the plan to evade sanctions. Under personal pressure from Erdogan, Trump also pressured his advisers, including Justice Department officials, to drop a case against the bank established by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, according to accounts from former Trump administration officials.
Jeffrey Berman, who was then the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, later said in a book that he was pressured by acting U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker in 2018 and that Whitaker’s successor, Bill Barr, pressured him to settle the case on terms favorable to Halkbank. Berman charged that Barr urged him to grant immunity to Turkish officials with ties to Erdogan and suggested concealing those deals from a federal court — a move Berman said would be illegal. Berman and Barr did not respond to requests for comment.
Strangely enough, the Turkish invasion of Syria caused problems for Halkbank. The criticism Trump faced for allowing Erdogan to invade appears to embarrass the US president. He responded by trying to reverse course. In a bizarre public message, he threatened to destroy the Turkish economy. “Don’t be a cruel man,” Trump wrote. During this dispute, Trump and his advisers, including Barr, dropped their opposition to indicting Halkbank. Berman later recounted that Trump’s “disagreement” with Erdogan led to the “green light to indict Halkbank.” We did this within 24 hours.”
Trump’s approval of the Turkish invasion of Syria, and his reaction to the criticism it has drawn, received limited attention during the 2024 campaign. But it highlights several of Trump’s weaknesses in conducting US foreign policy.
Although he presents himself as an effective negotiator, Trump in office has consistently accommodated autocrats, making concessions without winning accompanying benefits, former aides said. “He would interfere with the normal government process of doing something to a foreign leader,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, told the Times in 2020. Just in case what? In anticipation of another service from that person in the future.
Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2019 that his decision to detain Uyghur Muslims in detention camps was “absolutely the right thing to do” and urged Xi to “go ahead with building the camps,” Bolton wrote in the book. In another meeting that year, Bolton wrote, Trump “begged” Xi to help Trump’s electoral chances by purchasing US soybeans and wheat. It seems that Trump was hoping that this trade would win him votes in rural states that were affected by his trade war with China.
This tendency to appease the autocrats who fawn over him is part of Trump’s personalization of foreign policy, a tendency to make diplomacy serve his own interests, not the interests of Americans.
Then there is the conflict of interest. Trump admitted, in late 2015, that “I have a little bit of a conflict of interest” in dealing with Turkey, due to a licensing deal he struck that paid him to have his name appear on two glass towers in Istanbul. The leak of some of Trump’s tax returns in 2020 revealed that he actually received at least $13 million, including at least $1 million while he was president, through the deal. The man who helped broker Trump’s licensing deal later lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of Turkish interests.
If elected again, Trump’s business interests would lead to similar conflicts with Vietnam, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries. Through his family, he will also have trade conflicts with Albania, Qatar, Serbia and Saudi Arabia, which paid $87 million to a fund set up by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
It is not clear to what extent financial interests influence Trump, as opposed to flattery or a desire for autocrat approval. The problem is that the Americans do not know what interests he pursues.
But Erdogan is likely to expect Trump to be lenient if he wins, perhaps starting with Halkbank. A federal appeals court recently ruled that the bank’s prosecution could proceed, following the bank’s efforts to claim sovereign immunity.
Turkish interests allegedly spent large sums of money to corruptly influence New York Mayor Eric Adams, who is accused of issuing an order allowing the 36-story Turkish consulate to open despite security concerns. If Adams is going to help solve the fire code problem, what might Trump do for Erdogan?
