It’s been a surreal year, and now it just got a little bit more surreal – but this time it doesn’t involved Donald Trump, but instead our next diplomat extraordinaire – Lindsey Lohan. Amberin Zaman reports for AL Monitor:
Over the past week, images of the American actress, singer and model visiting Syrian refugee camps — cradling babies and sporting an Islamic-style headscarf — have been splashed across the pages of pro-government media outlets. Lohan’s compatriot Angelina Jolie has visited the same refugee camps along the Syrian border several times, but she never elicited the gushing enthusiasm afforded Lohan.Why the discrepancy? Because Lohan has waded into Turkish politics in a big way, spouting, among other things, one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s worthier mantras: “The world is bigger than five.”
For Lohan’s American fans who need help deciphering Erdogan’s shorthand, it means the permanent membership of the UN Security Council should be expanded beyond its current five states, ostensibly to include Turkey. The fate of millions of people, Lohan solemnly observed in an interview with the pro-Erdogan ATV channel, should not be decided by five countries.
In another interview, with pro-government newspaper Haberturk, Lohan praised Erdogan for his handling of the July 15 coup attempt. The Turkish people truly respected him, she said. Lohan also gave Turkey’s tottering tourism industry a boost, asserting, “Turkey is a very safe and livable country.”
Nothing, however, will have won over more Turks than her tweeting “Terörü Lanetliyoruz,” which translates, “We curse terrorism.”
Some days you just want to hide in the back yard and not come out for a while.
