1. In Washington, DC, tough action came against Turkey in hopes of preventing a worse crisis. President Trump announced he’ll soon sign an executive order imposing economic sanctions, canceling a $100-billion trade deal and hiking import tariffs on Turkish steel.

It comes only a week after Trump announced the removal of US troops from the area. Turkey President Erdogan saw it as a green light to launch a long-threatened military offensive in Syria designed to destroy Kurdish militias that he calls terrorists.

Download our new prayer guide, praying through the Executive Order establishing sanctions on Turkey.

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Now Vice President Mike Pence [and Secretary of State Pompeo] is being dispatched to lead an American delegation to Turkey.

“The sanctions that were announced today will continue and will worsen unless and until Turkey embraces an immediate cease-fire, stops the violence, and agrees to negotiate a long term settlement,” Pence insisted.

And rare bipartisanship occurred on Capitol Hill as Republicans and Democrats joined together to support sanctions against America’s NATO ally Turkey and President Erdogan.

President Trump says the US troops leaving Syria will be sent to Iraq if needed to fight ISIS. . . .

This all comes as an editorial written by Turkish President Erdogan appeared in the Wall Street Journal. He said Turkey has stepped into northern Syria because refugee flows, violence and instability there have become intolerable.

Meanwhile, 50 American tactical nuclear weapons are still being stored in Turkey at Incirlik Air Force Base. US State and Energy Department officials are quietly considering plans to evacuate them. One senior administration official reportedly said the nukes are essentially hostages of Erdogan.

In a statement released Tuesday, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Turkey’s leaders are responsible for the damage to their economy.

“For two years, Turkey unjustly held US pastor Andrew Brunson, and the Trump Administration, at my request, responded with sanctions. When Turkey tried to purchase both Russian and US military equipment, we pushed to stop the transfer of the US F-35 technology to Turkey. Now, as Turkey continues to turn their back on the region it is right that the US should respond with the appropriate consequences when foreign allies make ill-advised military advances instead of promoting peace in the region,” the statement read.

“Turkey has aggressively moved into Syria causing civilian casualties, additional refugees, and has caused the release of multiple ISIS prisoners. The damage to the Turkish economy from the US sanctions is clearly the responsibility of the Turkish leadership, which has attacked the Kurds and made a bad situation in Syria even worse,” the statement concluded.

(Excerpt from CBN News. Article by Gary Lane.)

President Trump addressed U.S. actions regarding Turkey and Syria on Wednesday in a meeting with the president of Italy. Here is an excerpt of his remarks:

“So, Syria is either negotiating with or talking to Turkey. We’re also talking to Turkey. We’ve put massive sanctions on Turkey. Sanctions work, frankly, better than fighting. Certainly when you’re down to 28 people, we’re not going to be fighting. We didn’t want to fight anyway. I don’t think there’s any reason to, from the United States’ standpoint.

Now, as to Syria wanting to take back their land, that’s a whole different story. If Syria wants to fight for their land, that’s up to Turkey and Syria, as it has been for hundreds of years, they’ve been fighting. And the Kurds have been fighting for hundreds of years — that whole mess. It’s been going along for a long time.

Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine. It’s a lot of sand. They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So there’s a lot of sand that they can play with.

But we were supposed to be there for 30 days; we stayed for 10 years. And it’s time for us to come home. We’re not a policing agent, and it’s time for us to come home.

But we’re working with Turkey. We’re working with talking to everybody in the area — whatever we can to do keep it stable or stabilize it as much as possible, knowing that it’s possibly never going to be very stable.”

(Excerpt from whitehouse.gov.)