MAYBE NOT HA-HA FUNNY, BUT STILL FUNNY: U.S. spokeswoman says Erdoğan’s “Ottoman slap” threat funny.

The United States and Turkey are at odds over U.S. support for Kurdish forces in Syria. The U.S. military has backed the mainly Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and together they have pushed Islamic State (ISIS) out of most of northern Syria to a remote area astride the border with Iraq.

Turkey sees the YPG as an arm of Kurdish rebels in Turkey and launched an operation against the group in the northwestern Syrian enclave of Afrin three weeks ago. Erdoğan has also threatened to pursue the offensive to into the area around the Syrian town of Manbij where U.S. troops are training the Kurdish forces.

U.S. Lieutenant General Paul Funk, the commander of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS, said last week on a visit to Manbij that U.S. forces would defend themselves if attacked. “You hit us, we will respond aggressively. We will defend ourselves,” he said.

Erdoğan hit back on Tuesday. “Those who say ‘if they hit us we will respond harshly’ have clearly never received an Ottoman slap.”

I’m not sure the Ottomans successfully slapped the West after taking bits of Ukraine from Poland in 1676.