Episode Details

Not so long ago, Turkey was widely regarded as the bridge between the Occident and the Orient, between Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East. Turkey separated mosque and state. Turkey was a NATO member. Turkey was economically dynamic despite not having oil. Turkey seemed to be democratizing.

That’s not how many of us see Turkey today under the increasingly authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of its Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. He’s served as a senior director on the National Security Council, a senior advisor in the State Department, and a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Pentagon. He has a doctorate from Princeton, and he’s the author of “Ike’s Gamble,” a thoughtful re-examination of the Suez Crisis of 1956.

FDD Senior Fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Middle Eastern specialist at the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, was, for some years, based in Turkey.

Reuel and Foreign Podicy host Cliff May agree with Dr. Doran on most issues — but not on Erdogan. They discuss the root of their disagreement in this episode.