Dr. Harold Rhode of the Gatestone Institute, a former desk officer on Turkey for the US Department of Defense, spoke on Turkey’s new mosque complex in America.  Erdogan is a self-described Islamist, and his foreign policy seems increasingly built around expanding the role of Islam — specifically, of Turkish-led Sunni Islam.  Turkey’s foreign policy toward Europe is aimed at increasing the number of Muslims in the European population.  He is pursuing this goal, Dr. Rhode said, both through attempting to establish visa-free travel for Turkish nationals into Europe, and by vastly increasing the refugee flow into Europe.  The establishment of a huge mosque near Washington, D.C. puts the stamp of Turkish leadership at the heart of America’s Islamic community.

At the opening of the mosque this week, President Erdogan inserted himself into America’s presidential electoral politics.  Calling American Muslim communities “‘primary elements’ of American society,” Erdogan denied that there was any connection between Islam and terrorism — with one exception.  Americans should understand that Kurdish communities seeking independence from Turkey were terrorists in “religious disguise.”  That religion is, of course, Islam, so we are to understand that the Kurds opposed to his government are the one counterexample in which there is an Islamic movement that is essentially terrorist in nature.

The Kurds might have at least as good a case against Erdogan.  US Secretary of State John F. Kerry recently charged Syrian President Assad with violating the laws of war by using “surrender or starve” tactics against civilians.  But Kurdish villages in Turkey have been subject to exactly the same brutal treatment by Erdogan’s government.  The Kurds have been long-term American allies in the War on Terror, and are the only part of the so-called Arab Spring movements that have flowered into a democracy that shows equal respect for women and religious minorities.  Turkey’s government has responded not by treating them as allies against the Islamic State (ISIS), but by placing the Kurds under an aerial bombardment.  The result has been to hamper the Kurdish campaign against ISIS while shoring up ISIS’s supply lines.

Meanwhile, in addition to starving villages into submission, Erdogan has been involved in a march against Western values of free inquiry and free expression.  Academics who signed a petition calling for an end to the war crimes against the Kurdish population have been rounded up by his government.

Both the Kurds and the decent Turkish people deserve better than Erdogan and his Islamist government.  Dr. Rhode reminded listeners of Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who instituted a secular democracy and dissolved the old Ottoman caliphate.  America should be an ally to those Turks who still believe in that vision.  Instead, we are allowing Erdogan to build monuments to his Islamist vision here in America.