Istanbul
The most dramatic part of President Erdogan’s visit to Washington this week was the punch-up between his security guards and Kurdish demonstrators on the lawn outside the Turkish embassy.
The protest was nothing unusual for a president who seems to provoke adoration and disgust in equal measure wherever he goes. Neither was the violent scuffle a surprise; Erdogan’s bodyguards did the same last time he was in the States. The news barely touched the Turkish press, and not only because there are few titles left on the news stands which offer opposition to Erdogan. When similar fights break out in the Turkish parliament, as they have done regularly over the past year, such scenes are barely worth writing about.
Meanwhile, the fact that the scrap generated far more headlines in the western press than the actual meeting between Erdogan and Donald Trump shows how anodyne the latter was, despite the hype that preceded it.
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