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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
by 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 agoWhich 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 agoNot 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 agoWe'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...