Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to play both sides of the NATO fence. Now he's once again (yes, again) threatening to close two key U.S. airbases in his nation. This time it's over the successful, bipartisan vote in the U.S. Senate to recognize the 1915 Armenian genocide.
On Sunday, Erdoğan told an interviewer that "if necessary, we may close Incirlik and Kurecik." This has been an ongoing threat, deployed last when the non-Trump portions of the United States government expressed outrage over Turkey's invasion of Kurdish-held Syrian lands. Both bases are important for U.S. operations in the Middle East and for NATO missile defense; Erdoğan, however, may prefer the U.S. have less visibility into what happens on the Turkish-Syrian border. He also appears to be inching toward the notion that he may have more freedom to govern Turkey in the manner he sees fit by forging new ties to Russia, whose oligarchic leader has absolutely no issue with state corruption, advantageous invasions, or the more-than-occasional state murder, rather than suffer through the complaints of NATO allies.
More likely, however, it's just the usual chest-thumping for the home crowd and warning to U.S. lawmakers that they had better treat him with the unadorned respect that Donald Trump does. All Erdoğan needs to do to keep Trump in line is remind Trump of his business interests, and how Trump wouldn't want something to happen to them; this is the same play, but with nuclear weapons.
As with many things that have dissolved in the Trump era, it's not clear that the U.S.-Turkey relationship will return to something less ... stupid ... after our own Dear Leader retires to his Florida club. It is possible that a less obsequious, fawning and compliant U.S. leader would have been able to put Erdoğan's worst impulses more in check, or at the very least not betray American military allies on Erdogan's personal request. But it's also possible Erdoğan intends to put Turkey on an authoritarian path that he expects will result from a full break from NATO sooner or later; he's certainly not getting much pushback on that notion from the current clown.