Armenian News-NEWS.am presents below an abridged version of an article by analyst Douglas Bloomfield, which is published in The Jerusalem Post.

Turkey took another step closer to becoming an extremist Islamist state and patron of terrorists Sunday when Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the country’s first elected president.

That should worry Washington.

Turkey is a long-time NATO ally, but under Erdogan it has moved closer to Iran and radical Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and, possibly, ISIS. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has been actively recruiting in Turkey, Erdogan’s government admitted, and Turkish and other media reports that Turkey has provided funds and medical assistance for the notorious terror group.

He [Erdogan] accused Israel of genocide in Gaza and his foreign minister called Israel’s actions “ethnic cleansing and a crime against humanity.”

The term “genocide” was actually created with the systematic Turkish slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians during and right after World War I. That was part of its ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Greeks and Assyrians who Turkey drove out of their homelands.

When resolutions are introduced in Congress to commemorate the Armenian genocide, the Turkish government goes berserk and blames the Jews. Its officials call the Israeli government in Jerusalem and their highly paid Jewish lawyers in Washington demanding the legislation be stopped and Jewish sponsors remove their names.

In the 100 years since the Armenian genocide, Turkey has gone from the Ottoman Empire to a secular republic and now Erdogan wants to turn it into an Islamic state.

Congress needs to hold serious hearings on the US-Turkish relationship. Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic power grab, his support for terrorists, his reliability as a NATO ally and his trustworthiness for sharing US intelligence, security and technology should be carefully examined.