“I don’t think Turkey, in my view, is trying to up the ante in its conflict with Germany… Turkey needs Germany a lot more than Germany needs Turkey.”

“What’s striking about today’s abuses isn’t that they’re innovative…—most would have quite normal in the 1990s—but rather that they represent a very clear rolling back of reforms that the AKP itself had implemented.”

“My strong sense is that much of this is generated by prosecutors and facilitated by judges who are guessing at what the government wants… You have an environment where everyone is trying to demonstrate their loyalty.”

“Erdogan not only banks on his personal rapport with Trump to evade congressional pressure and minimize bilateral tensions. He is also emboldened by an American president who appears to share his contempt for media, dissent and rule of law.”

“If Congress wants to sanction Turkey, then it needs to sanction Turkey in the right ways and with an eye towards getting results — not just [doing] things that will piss them off.”

“[Trump’s] embrace [of Erdogan] and that willingness to ignore authoritarian repression and human rights abuses inside Turkey does not extend beyond the White House [and] many here in Washington have deep concerns with those issues.”

“Trump has sanctioned Turkey before, but he does this in such a transactional way that the message is, I will sanction you now but you just have to give me one concession and I will lift it.”