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Turkey has a lot of rubbing points with the west and that has not prevented it to be a NATO member for decades. You need to compromise and obviate issues, and t

Turkey has a lot of rubbing points with the west and that has not prevented it to be a NATO member for decades. You need to compromise and obviate issues, and this can happen between Turkey and Russia.

hx87 10y ago
Turkey had one rubbing point with NATO (Cyprus), and with a minor and not very well regarded member at that (Greece). There weren't any major points of contention with the United States.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  Not an expert, but I would say Kurds, Iran, Israel, Egypt are all points were Turkey and USA do not align very well. By the way, even USA and EU do not allign perfectly in all issues. And even the EU has a lot of differing opinions, which does not prevent them to collaborate (except brexit UK) And what's with Cyprus? According to some coments it is the main reason why Turkey is not EU member, but according to you it's just a minor issue? I am confused.
  - hx87 10y ago
    Kurds -- not an issue until Daesh became a problem, very recently, thanks to AKP Iran -- the US dislikes Iran (less and less every day), Turkey is neutral, no big disagreements there Israel -- historically not an issue, only an issue now due to AKP government Egypt -- Not an issue, until recently when the MB government got couped All of those disagreements were nonexistent or of negligible importance until recently, when they were aggravated by actions of the AKP government. The EU and US have their problems, but they don't extend to geopolitics; it's not like the two have sponsored opposing factions in a war before, with the possible and very brief exception of Germany/Croatia vs US/Bosnia in the 90s. Turkey's problems with Russia are much larger in scope and severity than anything that has ever happened within NATO or the EU. I did not say that Cyprus was a minor issue. It's a major issue with one member of NATO (Greece) whom the other members don't respect very much. The other members do not consider it much of an issue at all.
    - gonvaled 10y ago
      Which strongly suggests that Turkey's days in NATO are numbered, specially now that NATO and EU betrayed Erdogan. Will Turkey get closer to Russia? I think so because bipolarity is on the rise, with NATO on one side, Russia+China on the other. And Erdogan apologized to Putin two weeks ago.
      - niftich 10y ago
        Not necessarily. Turkey's just playing both sides. Why wouldn't they? Russia wants free military transit for their warships of the Turkish Straits (which it has to clear with Turkey right now [1]) and it would vastly prefer not to have to go through a NATO country. It would also appreciate another large ally in that region, or maybe another naval base and airfield. EU wants to be friendly with Turkey because it's the only other route for oil/gas pipelines towards the Middle East that doesn't involve Russia. EU is already heavily dependent on Russian natural gas, and has been seeking solutions [2] to remedy this, which Russia understandably machinates against [3][4]. NATO wants Turkey as a hedge against Russia, as a detente for Greek-Turkish disagreements, and a foothold in the Middle East. Turkey could very well be in a position to court both NATO and Russia and see what it can get. This may not imply shifting alliances, just trying to get incentives from all parties. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco_pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco_pipeline [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Stream [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Stream
        gonvaled 10y ago
        We'll see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/19/erdogans-purge-may-give-nato-no-choice-but-to-expel-turkey-from/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/19/erdogans-purge-ma...
deleted 10y ago
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hx87 10y ago

Turkey had one rubbing point with NATO (Cyprus), and with a minor and not very well regarded member at that (Greece). There weren't any major points of contention with the United States.

gonvaled 10y ago
Not an expert, but I would say Kurds, Iran, Israel, Egypt are all points were Turkey and USA do not align very well. By the way, even USA and EU do not allign perfectly in all issues. And even the EU has a lot of differing opinions, which does not prevent them to collaborate (except brexit UK) And what's with Cyprus? According to some coments it is the main reason why Turkey is not EU member, but according to you it's just a minor issue? I am confused.
- hx87 10y ago
  Kurds -- not an issue until Daesh became a problem, very recently, thanks to AKP Iran -- the US dislikes Iran (less and less every day), Turkey is neutral, no big disagreements there Israel -- historically not an issue, only an issue now due to AKP government Egypt -- Not an issue, until recently when the MB government got couped All of those disagreements were nonexistent or of negligible importance until recently, when they were aggravated by actions of the AKP government. The EU and US have their problems, but they don't extend to geopolitics; it's not like the two have sponsored opposing factions in a war before, with the possible and very brief exception of Germany/Croatia vs US/Bosnia in the 90s. Turkey's problems with Russia are much larger in scope and severity than anything that has ever happened within NATO or the EU. I did not say that Cyprus was a minor issue. It's a major issue with one member of NATO (Greece) whom the other members don't respect very much. The other members do not consider it much of an issue at all.
  - gonvaled 10y ago
    Which strongly suggests that Turkey's days in NATO are numbered, specially now that NATO and EU betrayed Erdogan. Will Turkey get closer to Russia? I think so because bipolarity is on the rise, with NATO on one side, Russia+China on the other. And Erdogan apologized to Putin two weeks ago.
    - niftich 10y ago
      Not necessarily. Turkey's just playing both sides. Why wouldn't they? Russia wants free military transit for their warships of the Turkish Straits (which it has to clear with Turkey right now [1]) and it would vastly prefer not to have to go through a NATO country. It would also appreciate another large ally in that region, or maybe another naval base and airfield. EU wants to be friendly with Turkey because it's the only other route for oil/gas pipelines towards the Middle East that doesn't involve Russia. EU is already heavily dependent on Russian natural gas, and has been seeking solutions [2] to remedy this, which Russia understandably machinates against [3][4]. NATO wants Turkey as a hedge against Russia, as a detente for Greek-Turkish disagreements, and a foothold in the Middle East. Turkey could very well be in a position to court both NATO and Russia and see what it can get. This may not imply shifting alliances, just trying to get incentives from all parties. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco_pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco_pipeline [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Stream [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Stream
      - gonvaled 10y ago
        We'll see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/19/erdogans-purge-may-give-nato-no-choice-but-to-expel-turkey-from/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/19/erdogans-purge-ma...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]