turkey's most famous politician, recep tayyip erdogan. r in one form or another, for more than a decade. he's the face of turkey's ruling justice and development party known as the akp. erdogan has, in recent years, made islamist politics mainstream, and while remaining very, very popular in this extremely polarized nation, cracked down hard on media, political opposition, free speech and, of course, demonstrations. in 2013, the almost revolution in turkey happened. a protest to contest the proposed demolition of istanbul's gezi park resulted in a brutal crackdown by the police. in response, ordinary turks unconnected by any particular ideology poured into the streets with the whole world watching on social media. they, too, were met with force. in the end, erdogan remained firmly in control, and there were repercussions for many who had supported the protests. from that point on, media, social media, even open discussion of issues or events became treated as hostile acts by foreign enemies. ♪ autocrats in general are not famous for their

in turkey, president recep tayyip erdogan has asked parliament to extend the state of emergency for another three months. erdogan first declared the state of emergency in july after a failed coup. in september, turkey dismissed or suspended nearly 40,000 teachers amidst an ongoing crackdown, which has also seen more than 100 media outlets closed and at least 40,000 people arrested or detained. "washington post" reporter jason rezaian has sued the iranian government over his arrest and imprisonment in 2014. rezaian was arrested along with his wife, also a journalist, and held for over 500 days on espionage charges until being released in january. his lawsuit accuses iran of hostage-taking, terrorism and torture, and using his capture as leverage in the ongoing nuclear negotiations. donald trump has claimed the u.s. paid iran $400 million in cash for the release of rezaian and four other american prisoners, but in fact, the money was money has been owed to iran since the 1970's when the u.s. refused to give them weapons iran had already paid for following the iranian revolution. doctors witho

meanwhile, turkey's president recep tayyip erdogan complained of being left out of the mosul offensive translated ): look, now, the operation in mosul has started. the operation continues. what do they say? "turkey shouldn't enter mosul." how can i do that? i share 350 kilometers of border with iraq, and i am under threat on that border. >> reporter: erdogan said again he will keep some 3,000 turkish- trained fighters in northern- most iraq despite objections from baghdad. as the fighting starts in earnest, concerns are also rising over the more than one million civilians still in the city. the u.n. and other organizations say they're preparing for up to 200,000 refugees. for the p-b-s newshour, i'm margaret warner. >> reporter: and now, for the perspectives of james jeffrey. u.s. ambassdor to iraq from 2010 to 2012, and now is a distinguished fellow at the washington institute, a think tank and policy analysis group. welcome to you. >> thank you, jeffrey. >> brown: remind us first why this city and its capture is so important. >> as we just heard, it's the last citadel of isil in iraq

. >> smith: american officials made frequent visits to turkey to try to enlist president recep tayyip erdogan's cooperation. erdogan refused. i wanted to talk to erdogan himself about this. he lives and works from a massive new palace in ankara with 1,000 offices and meeting rooms. after several requests, erdogan refused to sit for an interview. instead, he had me speak to his chief foreign policy advisor. so you're a nato ally of the united states, and you had a really fundamental difference in opinion about what should happen. the war in kobani then just ground on and on and on. >> yes, and it's difficult for us to understand why, you know, our ally, united states, a nato ally with which we have a model partnership, will support an organization that directly or indirectly attacks turkey, targets turkish security forces inside turkey.atic tensions bet u.s. and turkish president tayyip erdogan. turkish officia want their western allies to ser links with the kurdish fighters. >> smith: what does it tell us that immediately, we're engaged in this squabble with erdogan, supposedly a chief ally in