Ironically, although the media painted Trump as viscerally anti-Muslim, he never grasped—despite repeated efforts by key allied leaders in Europe and the Middle East and his own advisors to explain it—that Erdogan was himself a radical Islamicist. He was busy transforming Turkey from Kemal Ataturk’s secular state into an Islamicist state. He supported the Muslim Brotherhood and other radicals across the Middle East, financing both Hamas and Hezbollah, not to mention being intensely hostile toward Israel, and he helped Iran to evade US sanctions. It never seemed to get through.
