Ankara

Two days after Germany's foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel - standing next to his Turkish colleague Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara - said his "country has no choice but to begin the process of pulling its forces out of Turkey's Incirlik air force base" as the Turkish government will not allow all German lawmakers to visit troops there, Germany followed through on its threat and on Wednesday, the German Cabinet backed the withdrawal of the country's troops from Incirlik air base in Southern Turkey.

Incirlik air base

While Angela Merkel is busy sowing the seeds of the next cold war between Germany and the Trump administration (and therefore the US, if only for the next three and a half years), a troubling flashpoint for Germany continues to grow in Turkey where on Tursday, Turkey's foreign minister said it is not possible to allow German lawmakers to visit troops stationed at Turkey's Incirlik air base now, although he said Ankara may reconsider if it sees "positive steps" from Berlin.

Just three days after Turkish warplanes killed at least 20 US-backed Kurdish fighters along the Turkey-Syria border as well as several Kurdish peshmerga troops on Mount Sinjar in northwestern Iraq, footage posted by Syrian activists showed the US has deployed troops and APCs in the contested region, in a move that could potentially drag the US in a conflict where it already finds itself mediating between two so-called US ally forces in the proxy war against Syria.

Authored by Sukru Hanioglu via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The historic breakdown in Anglo-Ottoman relations is a useful model for evaluating today’s troubled alliance between the United States and Turkey

The diplomatic scandal between Turkey and the Netherlands continued for a fourth day on Tuesday, just hours ahead of the Dutch general election on Wednesday, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan once again accused the Netherlands of state terrorism and having a “rotten” character as the diplomatic spat between the two countries deepens, adding he would mobilize the Islamic world to fight xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia.