This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

In the wake of the Chinese Communist Party pandemic, a lot of evil forces are on the march. One largely ignored malign actor is Turkey’s Sharia-supremacist president Recep Tayyip Erdogan who’s acting on his longstanding ambition to be the next Caliph, presiding over a new Islamist Ottoman empire.

A symbolic step in that direction took place in recent days as Erdogan turned the magnificent Byzantine cathedral known as Hagia Sophia into a mosque. His office announced that this step was intended “to reignite the fire of hope” of Muslims from Uzbekistan to Spain – an assertion of Islamic claims to vast territories once controlled by jihadist rulers.

Worse yet, Erdogan is ever more aligned with China, Russia and the Muslim Brotherhood – and others overtly hostile to the United States and the Free World more generally. There must be costs for his ominous conduct.

This is Frank Gaffney.