Erdogan condemns Trump letter: 'We haven't forgotten'
President Donald Trump’s threatening letter in which he urged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to not be a “fool” or a “tough guy” was not well-received, with Erdogan on Friday condemning the message as undiplomatic and saying, “We haven’t forgotten it.”
“President Trump’s letter, which did not go hand in hand with political and diplomatic courtesy, has appeared in the media,” Erdogan said Friday during a news conference about the Syria-Turkey cease-fire deal, according to a translation. “Of course we haven’t forgotten it. It would not be right for us to forget it.”
The Oct. 9 letter demanded that Erdogan call off his invasion of northern Syria, warning that he would be viewed as “the devil” in history if “good things don’t happen.” It came after Trump had already received bipartisan and widespread backlash for pulling U.S. troops out of the region, smoothing the way for the incursion.
“Let’s work out a good deal!” Trump penned. “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’s threats referred to sanctions the Treasury Department previously imposed on senior Turkish officials for the detention of an American evangelical clergyman.
Erdogan reportedly threw the letter in the trash upon receiving it.
“For our relationship, there’s no point to dwell on this letter,” Erdogan told reporters on Friday. “This is not a priority for us, but when the time comes, we would like it to be known that we will take the necessary steps.”
He did not elaborate on what those steps would be.
“I hope history will not record this letter,” Serdar Kilic, Turkey’s ambassador to the U.S., said Thursday on “PBS NewsHour.” He maintained the letter should never have been sent because “it lacks all the niceties, and it’s void of any established practices in that regard.”
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine