Steve Witkoff and Tom Barrack speak at Concordia Summit.
Reporter: Tom, if Syria wasn’t enough, 15 years of civil war, you also have your ambassador to one of the most important countries, not only the region, but in the world, Turkey, a NATO ally. Turkey sometimes has a fraught relationship with Congress. What do you think is misunderstood about the Turkish and American relationship? What are people not seeing on the the positive side? What you’re doing behind the scenes with them?
US Ambassador to Ankara and Special Representative for Syria Tom Barrack: Everything is misunderstood. We can start from there. So everybody says, well, it’s a great NATO ally. It’s the second largest NATO ally. All of that is true. We’ve been dealing with the same issues for 10 years. But the same issues for 10 years have been going on. S400s, F-35s, F-16s, Halkbank. This confusion. Are they friends? Are they foe? They’re dealing with Russia. They’re conservative Muslims. They’re aggressive Muslims. They haven’t condemned the Muslim Brotherhood. They haven’t condemned Hamas. The same confusing issues. So what happens is our president says, “You know what? I’m tired of all of this. Let’s take a bold move and on a relationship to relationship base, give them what they need.” So yes, Mr. President, what is that? He says legitimacy. Right? I never forget. He’s so smart because it’s not about lines.
It’s not about the S400. It’s not about the F-16s. It’s not it’s about legitimacy. You have a country that’s been our greatest ally in NATO. NATO being Europe and Europe won’t let him into the European Union. He’s our greatest ally. It’s the largest buyer of F-16s in the world, right? Which keeps, you know, Lockheed moving. Yet, we’re thwarting him and giving him F-35s. So, it’s not about he’s he’s at a point. He’s 71 years old.
Source: @mintelworld
