Mr President: Please Immediately Replace Your Genocide-Oblivious Ambassador to Türkiye
Mr Tom Barrack Is Too Deferential to Mr Erdoğan's and Qatar's Leadership's Influence -- and Coldly Incognizant of the Endangered Lives of Syrian Minorities under Attack by HTS and Its Allies
President Trump has recently appointed Mr Thomas Joseph Barrack, Jr., as the US Ambassador to Türkiye. Barrack, a native Californian and the grandson of a Lebanese immigrant to the US, a graduate of USC, and a holder of a law degree from the University of San Diego School of Law — as well as a very successful businessman. A friend of Barrack, President Trump has apparently placed high hopes in improving US-Türkiye relations via the diplomatic skills of his appointee. To make this even more interesting, President Trump has also named Barrack special US envoy to Syria.
It seems that Mr Barrack is without doubt overly accommodating of President Erdoğan’s Neo-Ottoman designs on Syria — which evidently includes a clearing of the field by eliminating uncooperative Syrian minorities (e.g., the Alawites, the Christians, and the Druze).
Anyone successfully following Syrian news is well aware that the current (Türkiye-friendly) Syrian Government under the leadership of Ahmed ash-Sharaa (aka Abu Mohammad al-Jolani) and his HTS regime — who has been associated with al-Qaeda in the not-so-distant past — has in recent months engaged in monstrous slaughter of at least three Syrian minorities — the Alawites, the Christians, and the Druze.
What is troubling is that Mr Barrack — rather expressing alarm at ongoing Syria’s brutal bloodletting — has either unabashedly denied or excused it. This is completely unacceptable, wrong, and cannot prudently ignored by the Trump Administration (and Secretary of State Rubio).