Trump’s Authoritarian Envy: The Plight and Peril of a Lame Duck

hile the world was distracted, Turkey swallowed a piece of Syria. This is not a creeping occupation; it is annexation in plain sight, a brazen 21st-century conquest. Following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Ankara has seized effective control of approximately 9,000 square kilometers of northeastern Syria—a territory larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. This is no mere buffer zone patrolled by a nervous neighbor; it is a new, unofficially declared Turkish province. 

The evidence of this de facto annexation is overwhelming and irrefutable. The Turkish lira, not the Syrian pound, is the official currency. Turkish-language schools, funded and staffed by Ankara, are educating Syrian children. Turkish-built hospitals, post offices, and infrastructure projects have replaced the functions of the Syrian state. Most strategically, plans are advancing for a railroad that will directly connect this resource-rich territory to the Turkish heartland, cementing its economic and strategic absorption for decades to come. All the while, Turkish troops patrol the region, enforcing Turkish rule and effectuating a brutal clampdown on the Kurdish populations, once America’s most effective partners against ISIS.  READ MORE