President makes progress on series of issues despite some distaste among international partners for his methods
Any student of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s negotiating methods knows that the Turkish president is the master of leverage, waiting until his interlocutor is at their weakest before making his final play.
His methods can be brutal. Leaked minutes from a 2015 meeting with EU leaders about a shaky deal on stemming migration from Syria recorded him saying: “We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and we can put the refugees on buses … So how will you deal with refugees if you don’t get a deal? Kill the refugees?”
