https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origina...nding.html
Article talks about disagreements between the US and Turkey.
If Erdogan's party remains in control, I don't see Turkey remaining in NATO and with ties to the west.
And would that be a big loss to NATO? Other than their knowledge of NATO, I'm not sure it would be.
Turkey's value to NATO traditionally was proximity to the Soviet Union. It was a great place to monitor signals, Very useful for keeping an eye on Soviet naval activities, and a great launching bad for short and medium range missiles.
In the wake of OPEC wealth and their funding of Islamic fundamentalists they were useful as a Muslim nation oriented toward the west that could act as an under the radar intermediary.
We no longer care about deterring the Russians even after the invasion of the Crimea and Turkey has stronger financial interest in being on good economic terms with Russia than any time in the recent past. Turkey has its own internal problems that no longer makes it terribly useful in the field of diplomacy.
Net loss in having someone will share information about Russia and its activities but they are pretty much lost already in diplomacy.
(08-19-2018 09:23 PM)bullet Wrote: [ -> ]http://www.atimes.com/the-west-must-face...in-turkey/
Someone in the press decided to respond to my question!
Good analysis.
In the Cold War we constantly looked past whether or not a nation was a liberal democracy as long as they weren't aligned or overly friendly with the Soviets.
In the post-Cold War era, the best defense for the United States is seeing nations respect the right of their citizens to select their leaders from multiple candidates in a free and fair election and respect that all humans have a set of rights that government should respect and defend.
Nations that do that are rarely going to be any risk to the United States.
Turkey is a risk despite the piece of paper that says they are an ally.
We can easily withdraw from any nation when we finally no longer need boots on the ground. As long as we need boots on the ground then controlling key points geographically will still be important. Turkey was our means of keeping the Soviets out of the Mediterranean and therefore out of the Oil nations and away from what at that time were essential rare earth metals in South and Central Africa necessary for the production of alloys essential to the manufacture of satellites and spacecraft. It is also a chief political reason we've always kept Israel close, other than the obvious
When the day comes that our boots on the ground are remotely controlled androids and our first strike weapons are space born then this antiquated way of looking at the strategic choke points will no longer be necessary.
(08-20-2018 09:38 AM)arkstfan Wrote: [ -> ]In the Cold War we constantly looked past whether or not a nation was a liberal democracy as long as they weren't aligned or overly friendly with the Soviets.
It was a wise policy during that period. Less so, nowadays.