What the commentators said

When the White House hiked tariffs on Turkish imports just as the lira was sliding, it was fuelling the flames, said Steven A. Cook in Foreign Policy. A gratuitous act of “Trumpian chestthumping”, it will be used to support Erdogan’s claim that Washington is responsible for all Turkey’s woes. Yet the US was certainly provoked. Among its grievances: Turkish plans to buy an air defence system from Moscow, in defiance of Nato; the targeting of Us-backed Kurdish forces in Syria by the Turkish military; and Turkish attempts to block American sanctions on Iran. And the disloyalty doesn’t end there, said Bernard-henri Lévy in The Wall Street Journal. This summer, Erdogan could be seen posing with President Putin of Russia and President Rouhani of Iran at a summit in Ankara on how to end the Syrian conflict. For good measure, he’s also cosying up to Beijing: at a meeting last month with President Xi, he talked of a “strategic rapprochement”. Do we really want to share military secrets with a country so obviously hostile to our interests? Surely, it’s now time to expel Turkey from Nato.

Be careful what you wish for, said Mark Almond in The Daily Telegraph. The falling value of the Turkish, Russian and Iranian currencies testify to the effectiveness of US tariffs and sanctions. But there are real dangers in creating a “swathe of pariahs” united against America. Besides, there’s no reason to believe that economic hardship and popular discontent will lead to regime change. Iran saw off the Green Revolution in 2009; Erdogan put down protests in Istanbul in 2013. Certainly, Erdogan looks well entrenched, said Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. The army was “purged” after the abortive coup of 2016 and parliament is now no more than “a toothless talking shop”. In such circumstances, even his worst mistakes – the failure to raise interest rates or the “unashamedly nepotistic” appointment of his son-in-law as finance minister – go uncorrected. “Turkey’s problems will get worse before they get better.”