Why Welcome Erdogan at the White House as His Terrorists Slaughter Christians?
On Wednesday, Nov. 13, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will meet in the White House with President Trump. Erdogan will receive all the honors of a friendly head of state. As Erdogan sits down with a president whose base includes conservative Christians, Erdogan’s al Qaeda-linked terrorists will busy themselves killing Christians in Syria. The same Christians who fought alongside U.S. soldiers just a few weeks ago to conquer ISIS and capture its leader.
CBN News gives the details.
Amnesty International reported Turkish forces “displayed a shameful disregard for civilian life, carrying out serious violations and war crimes.”
The Syrian National Army or SNA is Turkey’s ally fighting alongside the second-largest army in NATO. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights identified at least eight cases of proven ISIS members in the SNA.
Mindy Belz of WORLD Magazine is in the region and told CBN News she heard firsthand accounts of atrocities by this group.
“Numerous refugees described for me men having their hands tied behind their backs, seeing them beheaded. I had several reports of beheadings. And people cut in the streets and burned … these are war crimes. This is just incomprehensible in a seemingly senseless way of creating what Turkey calls a safe zone,” she said.
Belz said Christians were a specific target.
“I think this is really important. One of the Syrian refugees that I spoke to, and this was a Muslim, went out of his way to explain to me that what he saw was targeting of Christians,” Belz said.
The SNA has marked Christian homes with the Arabic letter “N” to identify them as Christian and then confiscated their belongings just like ISIS did a few years ago.
A NATO Jihad?
Right now al Qaeda affiliates are fighting Syrian Christian militias in what Erdogan’s own tame newspapers call a jihad. As the paper Yeni Akit put it: “Go and tell to the unbelievers that army of Mohammed is back!” Erdogan himself tweeted in Arabic: “I would like to kiss the foreheads of the heroes of the Mohammadan Army… .” Is this the kind of leader the U.S. can call an ally?
The president’s own people are deeply worried. CBS News reports.
President Trump’s national security adviser said he’s “very concerned” about reports of potential war crimes in Syria in the wake of the Turkish-led invasion of territory formerly held by U.S.-allied Kurdish forces.
“We’re very concerned about those issues, the war crimes issues,” National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said on Face the Natio” Sunday. “We’re watching them … monitoring it very closely. There is no place for genocide, for ethnic cleansing, for war crimes in the 21st century. The U.S. won’t stand by for it, and we’ve made that position very clear to the Turks.”
CBN News adds:
Top US Diplomat William Roebuck, Deputy US Envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition agrees and wrote in his internal memo that “Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria, spearheaded by armed Islamist groups on its payroll, represents … What can only be described as war crimes and ethnic cleansing.”
There is no cease fire. There is no peace.
War Against the Unbelievers
Christians in Syria who cheered on Election Night when Trump won are now sad and desperate. Conservative Christian groups in the U.S. such as the Family Research Council speak up in outrage. Congress has sanctions ready against Turkey, but Speaker Mitch McConnell has bottled them up.
As I write this, Erdogan “war against the unbelievers” is threatening to destroy Syrian Christian villages near Tel Tamer and in the Khabour valley in North-East Syria. As you read this, your fellow believers desperately defend their homes against Islamists no better than ISIS.
Is the U.S. too intimidated by chaotic, brittle Turkey to insist upon its values?
Last month, as another anniversary of the Armenian Genocide rolled around, Turkey sent its jihadists after descendants of its survivors. The Islamists drove away all the Christians of Ras Al Ain.
One week ago, Erdogan declared his intentions. They are global.
Our struggle to turn Islam into a guide that embraces our country and then the world, starting from ourselves, is an eternal obligation for all of us to declare.
This is what his extremist militias are doing right now in Syria.
Why Kowtow to Erdogan?
Why roll out the red carpet for someone who is right now leading a “jihad against the unbelievers?” Should the U.S. abandon the Christians of North East Syria who stood together with America in the fight against ISIS? U.S. troops are just a half hour away from the killing fields. If President Trump moved them in, they wouldn’t even face Turkish army units, just terrorists linked to al Qaeda, which was responsible for 9/11.
Is the U.S. too intimidated by chaotic, brittle Turkey to insist upon its values? To defend religious freedom, as President Trump promised just a month ago in the White House?
Reviving the ISIS Caliphate
Khabour and Tel Tamer are key crossroads and the gate to North-East Syria. If they fall, radical jihadists indistinguishable from ISIS will overrun the region. They will set free their fellow Islamists, the 70,000 ISIS prisoners now held by the SDF. Those fighters are just a two hour walk from unstable Iraq. ISIS leaders are waiting for them to march in and bring back the “Caliphate.”
Is placating Tayyip Erdogan really worth that much? Does President Trump want all this chaos raging while he fights impeachment and seeks re-election?
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Do American Christians want all this destruction on their conscience? Speaking to CBN News, Juliana Taimoorazy, president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council and Stream contributor, summed up what we face.
The dwindling number of Christians in the region really should be shocking to the Westerners because as the cradle of Christianity empties and everybody migrates to the West, two things happen. One, radical Islam will be on the rise because there is no buffer between the Islamic east and the Christian West. The second it this ancient civilization like Assyrians, we will melt in the fiber of the West and we will not be a part of the Middle East, which is the cradle of civilization and the cradle of Christianity.
Johannes de Jong is director of the Christian Political Foundation for Europe. He has been working with the Syriac Christians of Iraq and Syria, the Yazidi’s, Turkmen people of Iraq and Syrian Kurds. The CPFE is the European political Foundation of the European Christian Political Movement.
