[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 181 (Wednesday, November 13, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S6524]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Turkey and Syria

  Mr. President, on another matter, President Trump will roll out the 
red carpet today for President Erdogan, of Turkey, as he visits the 
White House after everything that has transpired over the last few 
months. This is after President Trump green-lit Turkey's reckless and 
destabilizing invasion of northern Syria, after Turkish troops and 
their proxies committed atrocities against civilians and the Syrian 
Kurds, who are our former partners in the fight against ISIS, and after 
Erdogan cut a deal with our adversary President Putin and threatened 
our allies in Europe with the release of ISIS's detainees.
  The fact that President Trump will reward President Erdogan with an 
Oval Office meeting today is mind-boggling. The meeting will serve as a 
very public example of how President Trump has mismanaged the situation 
in Syria and, most importantly, how he has complicated and slowed the 
effort to secure the enduring defeat of ISIS. It is ISIS that creates 
the greatest danger to our American homeland. As al-Qaida did before 
it, it will try to create huge damage. We in New York know that this 
can sometimes, unfortunately, occur. God forbid it happens again.
  Yet, holy mackerel, the President has no plan for ISIS; detainees are 
escaping; and the Turks are far more upset with the Kurds, who have 
been on our side with ISIS, than they are with ISIS. Erdogan suppresses 
free speech, arrests opponents, and does so many other terrible things 
to his country, which was once a much more shining example of 
democracy--and the President invites him here? Does the President have 
no sense of value? Does the President have no sense of morals? Does the 
President have no sense of what affects American security? It is 
appalling.