Thread by @KyleWOrton

#Turkey should heed Pompeo and release Andrew Brunson. It's wrong; the case has been hopelessly tainted with politics. It's also self-defeating. Holding him hits on a raw nerve in the U.S. and makes achieving Ankara's own objectives more difficult.

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1022143059860054017

Rarely happens that I dissent from @SohrabAhmari, but his argument that #Turkey "should no longer be thought of as a Western ally" because of behaviour like holding Pastor Andrew Brunson is one that I suspect will only gain force over time. commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy…

Turkey's suggestion that Andrew Brunson is being held as a hostage to be traded for Fethullah Gulen has exacerbated what was already a politicized prosecution. It was an aggressively stupid thing to do: inter alia, strikes at a part of American politics that Trump cannot ignore.

I still think we cannot afford to face an actually hostile #Turkey: Ankara's influence is too pervasive in too many areas of interest to us, including quarantining #Russia. We certainly can't afford the Turks to go into the enemy camp. And Turkey has real grievances with us. >>

>> #Turkey cannot press its case by taking hostages, though. And in the flirtation with #Russia, which is intended to bring in the United States to re-embrace Turkey, there is only so far things can go (the S-400 the clearest case) before it has gone too far. Dark times ahead.

Earlier this month, I pointed out there were at least three tracks running (Iran, Brunson, Russia) that "create[d] a real risk of U.S. sanctions being applied to #Turkey, a first since the Cyprus fiasco in the mid-1970s." bit.ly/2JSg1TK