| Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured reelection Sunday, and will begin his new five-year term armed with "sweeping new powers granted in a narrowly-won referendum last year," CNN reports.
Simon Tisdall writes for The Guardian that Erdogan leaves the West in a bind, and facing a crucial question: Is he a friend or foe?
"Erdoğan's confrontational behavior in northern Syria, where he has threatened US troops working with Kurdish forces to defeat ISIS, has left the Pentagon asking whose side he is on," Tisdall writes. "On the other hand, the US wants and needs Turkey's help for a multitude of reasons. It has use of an important military airbase…It knows there can be no lasting settlement in Syria without Ankara's blessing. And Turkey is, or used to be, a vital buffer against Russian expansionism in the Black Sea region, the Caucasus and the Balkans."
"European governments are in a similar bind. They value Turkey as a secular, democratic and pro-western outpost in a region where such qualities are rare…But they are obliged to temper their deep unhappiness with Erdoğan's domestic abuses and regular anti-European tongue-lashings in order to retain his cooperation in stemming Syrian refugee outflows and tracking ISIS terrorists." | 
