Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

Let's see Turkey for what it really is. How times have changed . In the 18th century, Russian meddling in Crimea and Syria would have likely led to war with Turkey . Today, Russia's actions in the former Ottoman world mean a state visit for Russian President Vladimir Putin, discounted natural gas, and lucrative trade deals . Turkey's recent coziness with Russia, and its reluctance to take on the ISIL, have left many politicians in the West confused and frustrated . However , to understand Turkish foreign policy one must first look at US and European foreign policy . The lack of any coherent US-Middle East policy has made Turkey reluctant to respond to ISIL in any meaningful way . US President Barack Obama's disinterest in the region began with his hell-bent desire to remove all US forces from Iraq, no matter what the security situation was like . As far as Ankara was concerned, the US left behind unfinished business in Iraq . Next came the US response to the so-called Arab Spring , which amounted to telling regional autocrats that they had to go , and when they did not leave, the US failed to do anything about it . Perhaps the biggest failure of Obama's Middle East policy was drawing a "red line", and then failing to enforce it when Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people . Pushing Turkey away . Since Turkey does not believe the US will see through to the completion of its mission to take on ISIL and force Assad out of power , understandably, Ankara has been reluctant to come on board . As far as Ankara is concerned, US creditability in the Middle East is bankrupt . It is not just US foreign policy pushing Turkey away from the West . This week, the EU's new foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, visited Ankara and told a group of journalists that the EU's "top priority will be Turkey's EU accession process" . After years of delays by Brussels, it is not likely anyone in Turkey will believe these words - nor should they . Europe's empty promises of EU membership, and its weak response over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has forced Turkey to hedge its bets that closer ties with Moscow are preferable to those with Brussels . Making a bad situation worse is the degree of European xenophobia lurking inside the debate around Turkish membership of the EU . Make no mistake ; Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not been the easiest leader for the West to work with . Apart from some of his more ridiculous, but harmless statements -"Muslim sailors reached the American continent 314 years before Columbus, in 1178" - many in the West have been put off by his crackdown on political dissent, limitations on press freedom, and his drive to bring a more conservative brand of Islam into what is still a largely secular society . Leaders in the West would be wise not to dismiss Turkey altogether because of Erdogan's ironfisted leadership style . Turkey is a parliamentary democracy , but as the president, Erdogan derives his extensive powers because his Justice and Development Party (AKP) currently controls parliament . Without an AKP majority in parliament, the centre of power in Turkish politics is likely to shift back to the prime minister's office . In June, Turkey will hold its next parliamentary elections - and if the elections are anything like Turkey's 2014 presidential elections , the race will be close . If the AKP does not get a majority, or if they have to form a coalition , Erdogan's power and influence will be significantly curtailed . Turkey is situated in a dangerous neighbourhood . It has land borders with Syria, Iraq, and Iran . Its border with Armenia is closed . A recent investigation uncovered a terror organisation operating inside Turkey with links to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps . ISIL controls huge swaths of land along the Turkish border with Syria and Iran . The threat from Assad is so great that NATO currently provides air defence units to protect Turkish airspace . It is clear that foreign policy decisions taken by the US and Europe have left Turkey feeling exposed . Short-sighted leaders in the West need to open their eyes and see Turkey for what it really is: a valued NATO partner, a secular state (at least for now) bridging Europe and the Islamic world, a developing economy and a major player in the energy market . What a tragedy it would be if broken promises from Europe, combined with a lack of US leadership and strategy in the Middle East, results in a Turkey that becomes more fundamentalist, anti-western, and pro- Russian .
Turkey's recent coziness with Russia, and its reluctance to take on the ISIL, have left many politicians in the West confused and frustrated

The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero? I have to confess : I was suckered by the trailer for American Sniper . It's a masterpiece of short-form tension - a confluence of sound and image so viscerally evocative it feels almost domineering . You cannot resist . You will be stressed out . You will feel . Or , as I believe I put it in a blog about the trailer , "Clint Eastwood's American Sniper trailer will ruin your pants." But however effective it is as a piece of cinema, even a cursory look into the film's backstory - and particularly the public reaction to its release - raises disturbing questions about which stories we choose to codify into truth, and whose, and why, and the messy social costs of transmogrifying real life into entertainment . Chris Kyle, a US navy Seal from Texas, was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and claimed to have killed more than 255 people during his six-year military career . In his memoir, Kyle reportedly described killing as "fun", something he "loved" ; he was unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a "bad guy" . "I hate the damn savages," he wrote . "I couldn't give a flying fuck about the Iraqis." He bragged about murdering looters during Hurricane Katrina , though that was never substantiated . He was murdered in 2013 at a Texas gun range by a 25-year-old veteran reportedly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder . However we diverge politically, I have enough faith in Eastwood's artistry and intellect to trust that he is not a black-and-white ideologue - or, at least, that he knows that the limitations of such a worldview would make for an extremely dull movie . But the same can't be said for Eastwood's subject, or, as response to the film has demonstrated, many of his fans . As Laura Miller wrote in Salon:"In Kyle's version of the Iraq war, the parties consisted of Americans, who are good by virtue of being American, and fanatic Muslims whose 'savage, despicable evil' led them to want to kill Americans simply because they are Christians." Adds Scott Foundas at Variety:"Chris Kyle saw the world in clearly demarcated terms of good and evil, and American Sniper suggests that such dichromatism may have been key to both his success and survival; on the battlefield, doubt is akin to death." Eastwood, on the other hand, Foundas says, "sees only shades of gray" , and American Sniper is a morally ambiguous, emotionally complex film . But there are a lot of Chris Kyles in the world , and the chasm between Eastwood's intent and his audience's reception touches on the old Chappelle's Show conundrum: a lot of white people laughed at Dave Chappelle's rapier racial satire for the wrong reasons, in ways that may have actually exacerbated stereotypes about black people in the minds of intellectual underachievers . Is that Chappelle's fault? Should he care? Likewise, much of the US right wing appears to have seized upon American Sniper with similarly shallow comprehension - treating it with the same unconsidered, rah-rah reverence that they would the national anthem or the flag itself . Only a few weeks into its release, the film has been flattened into a symbol to serve the interests of an ideology that, arguably, runs counter to the ethos of the film itself . How much, if at all, should Eastwood concern himself with fans who misunderstand and misuse his work? If he, intentionally or not, makes a hero out of Kyle- who, bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people- is he responsible for validating racism, murder, and dehumanisation? Is he a propagandist if people use his work as propaganda? That question came to the fore last week on Twitter when several liberal journalists drew attention to Kyle's less Oscar-worthy statements . "Chris Kyle boasted of looting the apartments of Iraqi families in Fallujah," wrote author and former Daily Beast writer Max Blumenthal . "Kill every male you see," Rania Khalek quoted, calling Kyle an "American psycho" . Retaliation from the rightwing twittersphere was swift and violent, as Khalek documented in an exhaustive (and exhausting) post at Alternet . "Move your America hating ass to Iraq, let ISIS rape you then cut your cunt head off, fucking media whore muslim," wrote a rather unassuming-looking mom named Donna . "Rania, maybe we to take you ass overthere and give it to ISIS... Dumb bitch," offered a bearded man named Ronald , who enjoys either bass fishing or playing the bass (we may never know) . "Waterboarding is far from torture," explained an army pilot named Benjamin, all helpfulness . "I wouldn't mind giving you two a demonstration." The patriots go on, and on and on . They cannot believe what they are reading . They are rushing to the defence of not just Kyle, but their country, what their country means . They call for the rape or death of anyone ungrateful enough to criticise American hero Chris Kyle . Because Chris Kyle is good, and brown people are bad, and America is in danger, and Chris Kyle saved us . The attitude echoes what Miller articulated about Kyle in her Salon piece : "his steadfast imperviousness to any nuance, subtlety or ambiguity, and his lack of imagination and curiosity, seem particularly notable" . There is no room for the idea that Kyle might have been a good soldier but a bad guy; or a mediocre guy doing a difficult job badly; or a complex guy in a bad war who convinced himself he loved killing to cope with an impossible situation; or a straight-up serial killer exploiting an oppressive system that, yes, also employs lots of well-meaning, often impoverished, non-serial- killer people to do oppressive things over which they have no control . Or that Iraqis might be fully realised human beings with complex inner lives who find joy in food and sunshine and family, and anguish in the murders of their children . Or that you can support your country while thinking critically about its actions and its citizenry . Or that many truths can be true at once . Always meet your heroes .
In his memoir, Kyle reportedly described killing as "fun", something he "loved"

Why #illridewithyou is an ill ride. The Sydney siege saw a slew of Muslim organisations issue statements condemning Islamic extremism . Such chastisement had meant something in the wake of 9/11 and the Bali bombings . Today, this has degraded into an automated knee-jerk response . It has been said so many times that its gravitas is greatly diminished . More subtly, this expectation for Muslims to keep speaking out is nothing short of Islamophobic . It assumes that Islam is, at its core, evil . It also upholds the view that Muslims can be essentialised as a monolithic whole . The chastisement thus becomes the yardstick from which the wider world is to differentiate between a good Muslim and a bad Muslim . Surely today, fourteen years after 9/11, we have wisened up to the fact that such atrocious acts are committed out of political, even criminal, intent more than theology . Surely, it is not a stretch to think that no one individual can represent an entire faith community . Surely, it is time, as Max Fisher of Vox argues, to stop asking Muslims to condemn terrorism . In the same manner, this good Muslim, bad Muslim binary undergirds the #illridewithyou campaign . Yes, the hashtag was borne out of goodwill ; an Asian Australian woman started it , as the Twitter universe reacted to the story of a woman pledging to walk in solidarity with another woman who took her hijab off following news of the Sydney siege . We will protect the good Muslims, so gestures the campaign . Unfortunately, it also reproduces an age-old trope that has been highlighted by scholars of postcolonial studies . As western colonisers encounter non-European natives, they began to think of their "other" in one of two antithetical ways - either as a barbaric savage or a noble savage . To the colonisers, the hostile savage is inherently dangerous in a sub-human way and always an enemy to the civilised individual . Meanwhile, the noble savage is romanticised as innately benign . Untouched by modernisation, the noble savage should be admired and protected . Transposed to modern times, the hostile savage translates as the bad Muslim and the noble savage - the good Muslim . Yet ,  barbaric or noble, a savage is still a savage . The hashtag #illridewithyou is just as patronising . Another factor that cast doubt to #illridewithyou relates to this question: Was the perpetrator Man Haron Monis the quintessential Islamic extremist? If the slate of profile pieces that are now just flooding our newsfeed can be taken as a gauge , the jury is still out on this . At first glance, one may indeed be tempted to fit him into the mould of what some security experts have called"bedroom jihadists", a fashionable term to describe self-radicalised individuals who have been recruited online to plan and execute terror attacks that would advance the cause of clandestine Islamist organisations . Yet Monis was a man of many masks . Closer inspection would reveal that he does not nestle comfortably into this category . His demands may have included an ISIL flag , but he made no strategic overtures that would advance the cause of any oppressed Muslim groups . At this juncture, it is doubtful if he had even made contact with ISIL . Let us also not forget that Monis was not a nobody who was secretly being turned to the ways of ISIL or any other Islamist agenda . In fact ,  he was a well-known criminal . Not only had Monis been charged with being an accessory to the brutal murder of his wife last year, he had also been slapped with 22 counts of aggravated sexual assault and 14 counts of aggravated indecent assault . In addition ,  information has surfaced that he had been charged with fraud in Iran , which requested his extradition from Australia some 14 years ago . As a friend rightly pointed out on social media, Monis' criminal records qualify him as a "sexual predator and misogynist" . Yet ,  this more dominant aspect of his identity has not stopped the rest of the world from linking the Sydney siege to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism . Yet consider this . During the Sydney siege, a shooting spree incidence unfolded in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania that left 6 dead . International media agencies described the perpetrator, the now-deceased Bradley William Stone, simply as "a suspect", "a gunman on the loose" and even "a Montgomery man" . No hashtag campaign was necessary to assure white people that the rest of the world will ride with them to keep them safe . The same can be observed of the reaction to the mass killings committed by the Norwegian Anders Breivik in 2011 . While Breivik had claimed himself a baptised Christian in his 1,500-page manifesto , the world did not expect Christians to condemn terrorism in the same way Muslims had . This discrepancy is telling of the power imbalance of our contemporary world . To white Australia, #illridewithyou may be its golden moment . To the rest of the coloured world, nothing has changed .

The Sydney siege saw a slew of Muslim organisations issue statements condemning Islamic extremism