World appears to have gone mad

turkey

My head is about to do a 360-spin.

The world has gone stark-raving bonkers.

A terrorist plows a truck into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, France, and kills 84 innocent victims before French police killed him on the spot. The world is thrown into utter grief, shock, mourning and heartache over this latest spasm of terrorist violence.

We’d just experienced the tragedy in Dallas, where five police officers died when a gunman opened fire on a Black Lives Matter march through the city’s downtown.

Now, tonight, Turkey is undergoing what now looks like a failed coup attempt seeking to topple the government of President Recep Tayyp Erdogan.

The president had been out of the country, then he returned to Turkey — apparently being greeted by cheering crowds upon his arrival.

As one commentator noted this evening, the coup seems to have failed because the insurgents didn’t capture or kill the president, didn’t take control of the media.

Erdogan now appears to be reasserting his authority in Turkey.

This is a huge deal.

Turkey is a member of NATO. It borders Syria and Iraq, which puts it at ground zero in our war against the Islamic State. We occupy Turkish air space while we launch air strikes against ISIS targets. We also rely on Turkey to lend its own considerable military support in this effort.

Now we have word of this coup attempt.

Erdogan hasn’t been the most reliable ally of ours. The Turks, though, pose a significant military threat to anyone who happens to be on the opposing side in a fight.

I’m still trying to process the consequences of a failed coup attempt in Ankara and whether it means any kind of significant change — or potential improvement — in Turkey’s ability to wage war against our common enemy … the Islamic State.

I’m almost afraid to go to sleep tonight out of fear that I’m going to wake up in the morning to find something else has overtaken the world’s attention.