The words they chose in addressing each other suggested a kind of “love affair” between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the president of the United States, Donald Trump. The latter poured lavish praise on his guest at the White House, saying before the cameras, “I am a great fan of yours.” Erdogan, who called Trump “my dear friend,” saw his controversial visit to American capital coincide with the beginning of the impeachment hearings in Congress.

Aside from this sort of exchange of compliments, the visit did not seem to produce any significant outcome for the benefit of either, although many pundits took pains to discover or invent one. Looking at the results, I interpreted the unusual expression of sentiments between two heads of state as “a transatlantic love affair.”

The love affair aspect of the relationship did not escape the attention of many observers around the world. “The Trump-Erdogan love-in at the White House was deeply unedifying — and disturbing. The US president has become the authoritarian Erdogan’s sock puppet, begging the question: Why?” was the lead-in to a Louis Fishman article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The Economist ran the headline “The strange love-in between Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” with the subhead “It is killing the US-Turkish alliance.”

Robin Wright wrote in The New Yorker, “After a tirade of tweets condemning the House impeachment hearings on the future of his Presidency, Donald Trump spent the rest of Wednesday trying to cajole his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, into cooperating — on anything." She quoted former US diplomat Philip Gordon as saying, “It is fair to ask if Turkey is still really an ally of the United States in anything more than name." I was with Philip Gordon in Abu Dhabi at an Emirates Policy Center event Nov. 11 — two days before the Trump-Erdogan meeting — where he made the same statement during the “Turkey: The Lost Game” panel moderated by Al-Monitor President Andrew Parasiliti.