Turkish Sources: Erdogan ‘Threw Trump’s Syria Letter in the Trash Bin’

Photo Credit: The White House

Turkish presidential sources told BBC in Turkish that President Donald Trump’s October 9 letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was “thoroughly rejected” by the Turkish president.

How thoroughly? The same Turkish presidential sources said: “President Erdogan received the letter, thoroughly rejected it and threw it in the trash bin.”

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The letter offered no diplomatic niceties and was unabashedly straight forward: “Dear Mr. President, Let’s work out a good deal! You don’t want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy – and I will.”

Trump concluded his letter saying: “History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don’t happen. Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!”

Trump then added a final line: “I will call you later.”

According to BBC in Turkish, citing the Turkish high level sources, Erdogan was very upset by “Trump’s mixture of threats and locker-room banter,” so much so that he ordered his troops into Syria that very day.

President Trump tweeted early Thursday: “I am the only person who can fight for the safety of our troops & bring them home from the ridiculous & costly Endless Wars, and be scorned. Democrats always liked that position, until I took it. Democrats always liked Walls, until I built them. Do you see what’s happening here?”

He also tweeted, quoting The Buck Sexton Show: “About 500,000 human beings were killed in Syria while Barack Obama was president & leading for a “political settlement” to that civil war. Media has been more outraged in the last 72 hours over our Syria policy than they were at any point during 7 years of slaughter.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday: “You don’t often encounter such language in correspondence between heads of state. It’s a highly unusual letter.”

Democratic congressman Mike Quigley, who serves on the House Select Committee on Intelligence told CNN: “I actually thought it was a prank, a joke, that it couldn’t possibly come from the Oval Office.”

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from northeastern Syria, in a 354-60 vote that included 129 Republicans and the entire 225-strong Democratic delegation.

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