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Trump announced on Tuesday at the NATO summit in Ankara that he would lift U.S. sanctions on Turkey and is considering selling the country F-35 fighter jets. Trump made the comment following a lavish state dinner hosted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom he praised as a "great leader." The mayor of Istanbul and other Turkish politicians, civil society figures and journalists remain jailed on politically motivated charges.
"Here in Ankara, and in Turkey more broadly, this NATO summit is not taking place in a climate of freedom. We saw, in the two weeks leading up to this summit happening, authorities in Ankara arrested over 200 people in dawn raids," says Ruth Michaelson, a journalist based in Istanbul. "There has also been a protest ban enforced in Ankara, and that is a protest ban that extends even to leafleting."
Repression from the Turkish state has not been addressed during the summit; instead, "something that we've been hearing throughout the summit is that Turkey has this indispensable place in NATO," says Michaelson.
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 Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesMAGA billionaire Elon Musk gave roughly $75 million to his pro-Donald Trump political action committee in just three months, making him one of the Republican movement's biggest bankrollers, filings with the Federal Election Commission showed Tuesday.
Musk's America PAC spent about $72 million in the same July to September reporting period, the filings said.
The cash infusion from the out-and-proud MAGA loving Musk puts him in league with GOP megadonors like Miriam Adelson, who gave $95 million to her own pro-Trump super PAC in the same period.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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