With Syria, Russia, and Iran engaged in a major offensive to subdue the northwest Syrian city of Idlib and its environs, the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has increased his country’s support for the rebels there. He has recently requested that the U.S. supply his army with Patriot missiles to defend against Russian air power. Last year, however, Erdogan rejected an opportunity to receive Patriots, opting instead for the Russian-suppled S-400 anti-aircraft missile system, which has essentially made close military cooperation with the U.S. and NATO impossible. Bobby Ghosh considers America’s options:

[T]here is a strong possibility that [Erdogan’s] request is a ruse, and that the message is meant for Moscow, not Washington. Erdogan may be signaling to President Vladimir Putin that the new Turkish-Russian relationship is at peril over Idlib. The symbolism is hardly subtle. Erdogan’s decision . . . to buy Russian S-400 missile-defense systems instead of the Patriots offered by the U.S. marked Turkey’s turn away from its allies in NATO, and toward their adversary. He may now want Moscow to believe that Russia’s actions in Idlib could force Turkey back into the Western fold.

President Trump should set firm conditions for the Patriots. Turkey should mothball—ideally, return—the S-400 systems it has received, and agree not to order more. Erdogan should commit to peace talks with U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria. And he should stop threatening to unleash waves of refugees on Europe. (For good measure, Trump should call on the Europeans to provide greater assistance to Turkey as the fighting in Idlib sends hundreds of thousands of refugees across the border.)

If Turkey’s request for Patriots is indeed a bluff, Erdogan will reject these demands. He must then lie in the bed he has made in Syria. But if he genuinely wants to bring Turkey back into the Western fold, in spirit as well as in theory, the price for readmission must be clearly posted at the entrance.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.