Erdogan’s Turkey is an enemy of the United States. It is an Islamist regime that supports and promotes Islamist terrorists around the region. It’s supportive of, among other Islamist terror networks, the Muslim Brotherhood, and has alleged ties to Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Turkey does not belong in NATO. It is certainly not an ally of the United States. Erdogan is not our “friend”.

The Turkish Islamist invasion will mean the possible escape of thousands of ISIS prisoners. It will mean a safe zone for Erdogan’s Islamist terrorist allies. And it will mean that Syria will be thoroughly under the control of Sunni or Shiite Islamists.

We can’t and shouldn’t keep US forces in Syria. Certainly not on an open-ended basis. The question is what, if any, buffer do we leave in place to prevent another Islamist civil war that will end up dragging us in one way or another.

The Kurds have been the best option thus far. An ideal setup would be to revive the tentative alliance between some Kurdish and Christian militias that helped stave off ISIS.

Letting Turkey build its security zone and massacre the Kurds wipes out the only non-Islamist force in the area. It means that going forward we’ll have a choice between Turkey and Iran. (Assuming they can’t figure out how to consolidate the area together.)

And that’s a terrible choice.

It’s not unreasonable for President Trump to withdraw from Syria. But it should not be done as an endorsement of a Turkish invasion. Instead we should have built Kurdish capacity and recognized an independent Kurdish state as a reversal of Obama’s pro-Iran policy.

Getting into bed with Erdogan means getting into bed with Islamic terrorists. It means Syria will become even more of a terror hub.

The United States can’t and shouldn’t stay in Syria. But we sure as hell shouldn’t be working together with the Islamist butcher in Istanbul. Or, for that matter, with Qatar and Iran.

Those are disastrous elements of Obama’s foreign policy that should have been long gone.

Erdogan was Obama’s friend. He’s not our friend. He’s our enemy. Any regional policy that doesn’t recognize it will repeat the same errors of the Obama years and lead to a resurgence of Islamic terror.