For years Washington has given Erdogan the benefit of the doubt despite increasing authoritarianism at home and radicalism abroad. Last month at the United Nations President Trump said bilateral relations were “as close as we’ve ever been.” He called Erdogan “a friend of mine” who deserved “very high marks.”

But Erdogan is no friend to America. While the U.S.-Turkey alliance goes back decades, its raison d’etre ended with the Cold War. There is no longer a broad geopolitical conflict holding the two states together. Indeed, Ankara is moving toward Russia. Moreover, the United States and Turkey have very different interests, or at least perceived interests, in the Middle East.

Still, Washington maintains access to Incirlik Air Base, which is around sixty miles from Syria. This facility hosts U.S. aircraft conducting operations in Iraq and Syria as well as some fifty nuclear bombs. The base is convenient, but not essential. Retired Gen. Chuck Wald, once a top air force commander in Europe, said “It’s a good place to have a base, but can we do it somewhere else? Absolutely.” Bulent Aliriza of the Center for Strategic and International Studies made a similar argument. “We could move out of Incirlik tomorrow,” he said. “It is far less important in the fight against ISIS than it was during the Gulf War.” Germany already has moved its forces from Incirlik to Jordan’s al-Asrak airbase.

Although access to the facility is convenient, it is not important enough to allow an unreliable, authoritarian and increasingly hostile government to hold America hostage. In 2003 the Turkish government refused to allow Washington to use Turkish bases in its invasion of Iraq. Ankara maintains ties with Iran; top officials are suspected of helping to evade U.S. sanctions. The Turkish government looked the other way in the early days as the Islamic State used Turkish territory as a conduit into Syria. Even today Ankara appears more interested in killing Syrian Kurds than ISIS fighters.

Turkish cooperation is less likely in the future. With a hostile public, transformed military and arbitrary president, even access to Incirlik is not assured. Indeed, President Erdogan does little to disguise his attacks on America. On the anniversary of the attempted coup he criticized “our so-called allies, who are trying to besiege us along our borders.”

The Erdogan presidency is a great tragedy. The principal victims of the new sultan’s misrule are Turks. But he also has destroyed the pretense that Ankara and Washington are united in a valuable alliance worth preserving. The United States increasingly must defend America’s interests and values from Turkey. That includes preserving the rule of law at home and standing up for those unjustly imprisoned abroad.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.

Image: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech at the 22nd World Petroleum Congress in Istanbul, Turkey, July 10, 2017. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

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