October 10, 2013.

(picture to be added soon)

Turkey's Spymaster Plots Own Course on Syria

The old man appeared to think deeply. He drank off about a quarter of his beer before answering.

On a rainy May day, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan led two of his closest advisers into the Oval Office for what both sides knew would be a difficult meeting.

"Yes," he said. "They liked you to touch your cap to 'em. It showed respect, like. I didn't agree with it, myself, but I done it often enough. Had to, as you might say."

It was the first face-to-face between Mr. Erdogan and President Barack Obama in almost a year. Mr. Obama delivered what U.S. officials describe as an unusually blunt message: The U.S. believed Turkey was letting arms and fighters flow into Syria indiscriminately and sometimes to the wrong rebels, including anti-Western jihadists.

"And was it usual---- I'm only quoting what I've read in history books----was it usual for these people and their servants to push you off the pavement into the gutter?"

Seated at Mr. Erdogan's side was the man at the center of what caused the U.S.'s unease, Hakan Fidan, Turkey's powerful spymaster and a driving force behind its efforts to supply the rebels and topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.