by George Rasley, ConservativeHQ.com Editor

Yesterday, President Trump met with Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. You will hear a lot in the establishment media, and maybe even some from the White House, talk about what an important “ally” Turkey is to the United States.

Don’t believe it.

It is true that Turkey is part of NATO and was once part of our bulwark against the old communist Soviet Union, but those days are long past.

Today, Turkey’s government is part of the Islamist assault on the West and President Erdogan is one of the Muslim world’s leading advocates of cultural jihad and hijra – Muslim invasion by immigration.

On April 2, 2016, a gigantic Ottoman style of mosque was opened in Lanham, Maryland by President Erdogan. The mosque, according to Turkish officials, is “one of the largest Turkish mosques built outside Turkey.”

Funds to build it, as reported by the Turkish pro-government newspaper, Sabah, came from Turkey’s state-run Presidency of Religious Affairs, known as the Diyanet, as well as Turkish-American non-profit organizations.

The mosque is actually part of a larger complex, commonly referred to as “Maryland kulliye.” A kulliye, as such Islamic compounds were called in Ottoman times, is a complex of buildings, centered on a mosque and composed of various facilities including a madrassa (Islamic religious school).

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away from the American soil, in Turkey, Christians have for decades been deprived of the right to build their places of worship.

For example, in March of 2016, many places in Diyarbakir, Turkey – including the Surp Giragos Armenian Apostolic and the Armenian Catholic churches – were expropriated by the Turkish government, as well as the Surp Sarkis Chaldean Church, the Virgin Mary Ancient Assyrian Church, and the city’s Protestant church.

Consider also what Erdogan said just two months ago when, in the aftermath of an abortive secularist coup, he was campaigning for a referendum that would grant him near absolute power and European governments denied him the opportunity to campaign in their countries for the votes of the many Turkish immigrants living there.

Calling Turks the “future of Europe,” Erdogan implored his compatriots living on the Continent to have multiple children as an act of revenge against the West’s “injustices.” “Make not three, but five children. Because you are the future of Europe. That will be the best response to the injustices against you,” said Erdogan during a speech in the Turkish city of Eskisehir.

However, Erdogan’s most chilling threat came during a speech in Ankara, the president said: “If you continue to behave like this, tomorrow in no part of the world, no European, no Westerner will be able to take steps on the street safely and peacefully.”

Erdogan’s Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, also warned that Europe is headed for “wars of religion.”

This threat comes on top of Erodgan’s policy of allowing more than a million illegal migrants to enter Europe last year, some 80% of whom are young men of military age and many with known jihadi ties.

Our friend Daniel Pipes says Erdogan’s Islamist supporters sometimes suggest that he’s on his way to declaring himself caliph. As the hundredth anniversary of the Istanbul-based caliphate’s abolition approaches, he may find this tempting; depending on whether he uses the Islamic or Christian calendar, that could happen, respectively, on either March 10, 2021 or March 4, 2024.

Unfortunately, President Trump’s current set of national security advisors are blind to Erdogan’s Islamist goals – or maybe they are on the other side. Either way, it is time for President Trump to recognize that Erdogan is no “ally,” but an existential threat to American constitutional liberty and the values of the Western Enlightenment.

Reprinted with permission from ConservativeHQ.com