The prime-mover behind the toppling of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad was another, de facto dictator: Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He is poised to become its principal beneficiary, as well.

During the Cold War, Turkey was ruled by governments that, while Muslim, aligned their country with the West, securing NATO’s southern flank against Soviet aggression. Unfortunately, that alliance has no mechanism for expelling a nation now ruled by a Sharia-supremacist like Erdogan, allied with today’s existential threat to freedom, Communist China and set on its own aggressive agenda aimed at establishing a neo- Ottoman empire and destroying Israel.

Paging President-elect Donald Trump. The ability you demonstrated in your first term to wrangle Recep Erdogan is needed now, before he creates facts on the ground that will be a festering sore for your next one, and for the entire Middle East.

This is Frank Gaffney.