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It's posturing. The US is an easy target because there's no chance in hell the US and Turkey will go to war and Turkey is irrelevant enough to the US (and impor
by pluma 10y ago
It's posturing. The US is an easy target because there's no chance in hell the US and Turkey will go to war and Turkey is irrelevant enough to the US (and important enough as an ally to NATO and Europe) that Erdogan can be sure there will be no consequences. Meanwhile the US's apathy can be exploited for publicity by Erdogan and he can put Europe in a tough spot.
The coup wasn't a big threat. Only a fraction of the military was mobilised, all important government officials were able to flee and he was able to turn the entire population against the military because both mosques and TV channels spread his propaganda.
The military couldn't have followed through without creating a bloodbath that would have turned the populace even more against them. The coup had already failed the second Erdogan was able to escape.
- ZanyProgrammer 10y ago"and important enough as an ally to NATO and Europe" I have to imagine at some point Europe will have had enough of Erdogan.
- tremon 10y agoEurope will have to tolerate Erdogan until it starts reinvesting in its own military. Especially with the UK out of the picture, mainland Europe has very little military capability.
- nwah1 10y agoThe UK may be out of the EU, but that hardly means they'll look on collective European security matters with disinterest.
- usrusr 10y agoEurope has been running a pretty sizable shared military investment programme, it's called Greece. One has to wonder how much of their crisis would be left without that NATO-internal arms race vs Turkey (and the cheering exporters in Germany and France who happily supplied both).