“We discussed Syria. We discussed the Kurds. We discussed numerous things, and we’re getting along very well,” he said.

“The border and the safe zone is working out very well … and I gave a lot of credit to Turkey for that,” the president continued. “The cease-fire is holding very much so, and I think people are surprised, and maybe some day they’ll give me credit, but probably not.”

Trump granted tacit approval for Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria in October — which resulted in the slaughter of U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters — and withdrew the last American forces from that area of Syria while maintaining a troop presence to safeguard the Middle Eastern nation’s lucrative oil fields.

“We pulled our soldiers out, we took over the oil. We have soldiers where the oil is, and that’s the way I like it,” Trump said, adding that the Syria-Turkey border has “been under siege for many, many decades, and it was time for us to leave.”

The arguments are going to be that Trump is “keeping his enemies closer,” as if a line from the Godfather can fully explain the dynamics of American foreign policy in light of the capacity of the Executive branch of American governmental power. The reality is that Turkey is not a personal enemy of Trump’s, but a major ally of the US, regardless of the Islamism and racist nationalism that exists within the Turkish government. The United States is the one that made Turkey the second most armed country in NATO. The US’ backing of Turkey is not going to change, at least not any time soon. The reality is very simple: Trump is simply being a mouthpiece for the status quo of the American empire.

The American government decided to use a key figure within the racist pan-Turkist circle, Alparslan Türkeş. During the Second World War, Turkes was a Nazi operative who worked as the contact for the German Nazis in Turkey.

Turkes was convinced of the Darwinist and eugenist race theories of the Nazis, and in his speeches he would quote from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. When we speak of fascism, we usually think of Benito Mussolini emulating Hitler. But what we rarely talk about are the Muslim Turkish nationalists who also emulated Hitler. Look no further than to Nihal Atsiz. Around the same time as Turkes, there was another Turkish nationalist leader by the name of Nihal Atsız, who obsessed over Hitler so much that he, like the Alt-Right fanatics of our time, wanted to look like him. Here is his photo:

The syncretism between Sufi Islam, Pan-Turkism and Nazism, was the fitting formula for an anti-Soviet movement. One CIA document from 1949 said that Turkey is an “extremely favourable territory for the establishment of both guerrilla units and Secret Army Reserves. Politically the Turks are strongly nationalistic and anti-Communistic, and the presence of the Red Army in Turks will cause national feeling to run high.” Turkes was no small deal. He became the main contact for the CIA in their Gladio operation. As the CIA trained the Taliban against the Soviets, so the US would do the same with these Turkish racists. In 1948, Turkes made contacts with the CIA, and, it is said, upon being given orders by the CIA, he began to set up a nationalist paramilitary group in Turkey.

Turkes traveled to the United States where he made connections with people from both the Pentagon and the CIA. From 1955 to 1958, Turkes worked within Washington as part of NATO’s mission in Turkey. By 1952, Turkes had already established a paramilitary organization called Seferberlik Taktik Kurulu, or Tactical Location Mobilization Group. The base for this paramilitary entity was the CIA building, American Yardim Heyeti, or the American Aid Delegation, located in the Bahceliever district of the Turkish capital of Ankara. In 1965, the Tactical Mobilization group was restructured and given a new name, Special Warfare Department.

These squads would be used to conduct false flag attacks to spark nationalism in Turkey. For example, in 1955, Turkish agents threw a bomb into the Mustafa Kemal Museum in Thessalloniki in Greece. The bomb exploded and became a popular headline. The Turkish government and press then blamed the attack on Greeks. Racist hatred erupted, and Turkish nationalists then used the story to justify going on a killing craze and a rape spree. On September 6th and 7th, 1955, in the cities of Istanbul and Izmir, Turkish nationalist gangs destroyed hundreds of Greek homes, murdered sixteen Greeks and raped 200 Greek women. Priests were also scalped and burnt in their beds. According to a report made by the United States Congress:

 Greek priests were reported circumcised, scalped, burned In bed; Greek women raped. … Just 9 out of 80 Greek Orthodox churches In Istanbul were left undesecrated; 28 were demolished.