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This sounds very much right. Turkey's biggest problem with US, is that it doesn't know what trouble the Americans have with them. Every few years US politicians

This sounds very much right. Turkey's biggest problem with US, is that it doesn't know what trouble the Americans have with them. Every few years US politicians put something new on the table, and say it's a (new) problem. Turkey is the biggest military ally USA have. Loosing it will be a "before, and after" moment for NATO. Truly, USA's biggest problem with Turkey is exactly them being such a strong, and prominent military ally, throwing discord in US dominated bloc solely by the fact of its existence. Points: 1. Turkey's ultimate political alignment is NATO 2. Turkey's current political position can be rationally understood, in comparison to more irate allies, playing their double, triple, quadruple games. It has tensions with NATO, and US, but not because its ultimate alignment, and commitment to Atlantic Bloc changed. 3. Turkey is a way more useful military ally US have than any EU NATO member. Both in military strength, and level of commitment. 4. Turkey is the sole country US can consider a real military ally among dozens of "ally" countries which USA buys with billions of dollars per year in defence aid: Saudis, Egyptians, Emiratis, Pakistanis, Jordanians, Israelis... they are all basically a $100B a year black hole for defence aid. 5. Turkey is the only non-white country with commitment to hosting American nuclear weapons, and other serious defence assets after South Korea, and Japan quit. This is currently American's sole proof of not seeking a "rich white world alliance" as its foreign policy vision — hugely symbolic.

pjc50 5y ago
All of those points are valid, but the democratic status of Turkey is questionable (not a barrier to being a US ally) and it has a long-standing unresolved territorial dispute with another NATO member, Greece. The US throws a lot of money at the middle east because it doesn't understand it at all and has no coherent plan. Fortunately some of the money is thrown back at individual politicians.
newsclues 5y ago
I think It’s mainly about the Turkish group-political position thanks to geography and all those points are supplemental to geography
- baybal2 5y ago
  Yes, exactly. 1. With Erdogan, or without Erdogan, it's very unlikely Turkey will ever find any solace with anybody South, or East of their border. The article 5 will remain central to its defence if anything nasty comes up from the South, and the only option if Russia will attack them from the East. 2. Turkey will gain nothing from changing alignment to some distant foreign power. It is already a strong military power, and it barely ventured past their immediate vicinity in Syria. It cannot really confront Greece, with foreign power backing, or not, because of NATO. 3. The West will continue tolerate Turkey because they really have no alternative to Turkey, and vice-versa.
  - f0xytr0xy 5y ago
    1. Turks are very much in bed with the Uae. Qatar gave çayipp an airbus a380. The neo ottoman AKP loves the oil rich arab states. 2. Russia and Arab nations treat Türkiye with far more respect than Europe and Amerika 3. As çaydoğan gets more desperate before the 2023 elections, all bets are off.
smcl 5y ago
> Turkey is the biggest military ally USA have Would that not be the UK?
- baybal2 5y ago
  Five fold advantage in artillery. Two-fold advantage in conventional airforce + their new drone force. 6 fold advantage in tanks. 2 fold advantage in armour overall. 3 fold advantage in trained personnel When it comes to land forces, Turkey is many times more powerful than UK.
  - mbroncano 5y ago
    Nukes, or their lack thereof, is the elephant in the room here.
  - EvilEy3 5y ago
    Did you read that on Wikipedia, lol?
  - smcl 5y ago
    Those numbers sound big until you realise the overwhelming majority of that personnel are conscripts who will be very inexperienced and in all likelihood don't actually want to be there - from the wikipedia page you were on: > in 2010 the Turkish Armed Forces had an active strength of around 402,000 active personnel, consisting of 77,000 professionals and 325,000 conscripts Don't get me wrong, I'd be delighted if the roles were reversed and it was instead Turkey who had the 5th biggest military expenditures in the world and the UK were around 20th - there's far more productive things we could be spending our money on.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      > Those numbers sound big until you realise the overwhelming majority of that personnel are conscripts who will be very inexperienced and in all likelihood don't actually want to be there - from the wikipedia page you were on: Conscript training is still better than no training at all. In case of a serious military conflict, no NATO country other than USA will be able to avoid some degree of popular mobilisation.
zaphirplane 5y ago
Those are pro side of the balance on the other hand - non secular government - military adventurism - buying Russian s400 whatever that was - limited effectiveness in sophisticated asymmetrical insurgents wars - limited effectiveness against sophisticated military, two generations behind fleet of f16
saiya-jin 5y ago
If US needs allies so desperately that as a claimed leader of democracy is willing to ignore dictatorship regime, cronism within ruling family (I don't mean the guy responsible for this program but all the rest), semi-open support for ISIS in recent past (buying oil, treating wounded, supporting arms), massive human rights violations, atrocities against kurdish population, invasion of sovereign state(s) without any reason and generally huge misalignment of core values and mentality between US and Turkey, then I'd say... US is pretty fucked in near future and in very, very weak position. Turkey is a major threat to basically all its neighbors, and if their greed will continue to rise (and there is no reason to think otherwise with current leadership), Europe should consider it as a bigger threat than Russia with Putin. The relatively brief period when Turkey wanted to have peace with Europe is gone. I hope EU countries will realize that military spending needs to be increased and armies put back in good shape. It would be huge waste of money in other times but these days peace seems more and more fragile. Bullies only understand strength talk.
- f0xytr0xy 5y ago
  The EU kimd of screwed Türkiye. Turks took in 4 million syrian refugees and promised not to let them go to europe in exchange for billions of euros which were never delivered. Now Turkiye has had about 4 million syrian orisonwrs for 6 years and is about to absorb at least a million Afghanis. Turks cant even visit the EU withoit showing their entire Cvs (notarized and translated), financial statements, proof of Turkish housing and proof of education. Meanwhile westerners only have to use an app to get a $20 evisa. The eu are incredibly hypocritical when it comes to Türkiye. It wasnt so long ago that England tried to steal all of Turkiye, luckily ataturk whooped their colonial asses and sent them home with their limey tails between their legs.
  - EvilEy3 5y ago
    > Turks cant even visit the EU withoit showing their entire Cvs (notarized and translated), financial statements, proof of Turkish housing and proof of education. > Meanwhile westerners only have to use an app to get a $20 evisa. Gee, I wonder why.
f0xytr0xy 5y ago
Non-white? Uhh, Turks are from the caucuses. I think you mean non-christian / non-jewish
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Anatolians yes, not original Turks, Bulgars etc
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    Vast majority of turkish citizens are anatolians though
- baybal2 5y ago
  I think you got the idea, this is nonsensical to the point of being silly. "Being biologically white is not yet enough to be "politically white" for the Western old boy's club." This stands so past common sense, biology, sanity, and reason that I feel it's safe to assume that nobody on the intellectual level of HN readers will loose sleep over it. The point is the people who throw racial attributes left, and right in politics are so far past the common sense that you cannot expect that they target ears of sane people.
- rjsw 5y ago
  The Turks were definately considered "non-white" during the Brexit campaign.

pjc50 5y ago

All of those points are valid, but the democratic status of Turkey is questionable (not a barrier to being a US ally) and it has a long-standing unresolved territorial dispute with another NATO member, Greece. The US throws a lot of money at the middle east because it doesn't understand it at all and has no coherent plan. Fortunately some of the money is thrown back at individual politicians.

newsclues 5y ago

I think It’s mainly about the Turkish group-political position thanks to geography and all those points are supplemental to geography

baybal2 5y ago
Yes, exactly. 1. With Erdogan, or without Erdogan, it's very unlikely Turkey will ever find any solace with anybody South, or East of their border. The article 5 will remain central to its defence if anything nasty comes up from the South, and the only option if Russia will attack them from the East. 2. Turkey will gain nothing from changing alignment to some distant foreign power. It is already a strong military power, and it barely ventured past their immediate vicinity in Syria. It cannot really confront Greece, with foreign power backing, or not, because of NATO. 3. The West will continue tolerate Turkey because they really have no alternative to Turkey, and vice-versa.
- f0xytr0xy 5y ago
  1. Turks are very much in bed with the Uae. Qatar gave çayipp an airbus a380. The neo ottoman AKP loves the oil rich arab states. 2. Russia and Arab nations treat Türkiye with far more respect than Europe and Amerika 3. As çaydoğan gets more desperate before the 2023 elections, all bets are off.

smcl 5y ago

> Turkey is the biggest military ally USA have Would that not be the UK?

baybal2 5y ago
Five fold advantage in artillery. Two-fold advantage in conventional airforce + their new drone force. 6 fold advantage in tanks. 2 fold advantage in armour overall. 3 fold advantage in trained personnel When it comes to land forces, Turkey is many times more powerful than UK.
- mbroncano 5y ago
  Nukes, or their lack thereof, is the elephant in the room here.
- EvilEy3 5y ago
  Did you read that on Wikipedia, lol?
- smcl 5y ago
  Those numbers sound big until you realise the overwhelming majority of that personnel are conscripts who will be very inexperienced and in all likelihood don't actually want to be there - from the wikipedia page you were on: > in 2010 the Turkish Armed Forces had an active strength of around 402,000 active personnel, consisting of 77,000 professionals and 325,000 conscripts Don't get me wrong, I'd be delighted if the roles were reversed and it was instead Turkey who had the 5th biggest military expenditures in the world and the UK were around 20th - there's far more productive things we could be spending our money on.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > Those numbers sound big until you realise the overwhelming majority of that personnel are conscripts who will be very inexperienced and in all likelihood don't actually want to be there - from the wikipedia page you were on: Conscript training is still better than no training at all. In case of a serious military conflict, no NATO country other than USA will be able to avoid some degree of popular mobilisation.

zaphirplane 5y ago

Those are pro side of the balance on the other hand - non secular government - military adventurism - buying Russian s400 whatever that was - limited effectiveness in sophisticated asymmetrical insurgents wars - limited effectiveness against sophisticated military, two generations behind fleet of f16

saiya-jin 5y ago

If US needs allies so desperately that as a claimed leader of democracy is willing to ignore dictatorship regime, cronism within ruling family (I don't mean the guy responsible for this program but all the rest), semi-open support for ISIS in recent past (buying oil, treating wounded, supporting arms), massive human rights violations, atrocities against kurdish population, invasion of sovereign state(s) without any reason and generally huge misalignment of core values and mentality between US and Turkey, then I'd say... US is pretty fucked in near future and in very, very weak position. Turkey is a major threat to basically all its neighbors, and if their greed will continue to rise (and there is no reason to think otherwise with current leadership), Europe should consider it as a bigger threat than Russia with Putin. The relatively brief period when Turkey wanted to have peace with Europe is gone. I hope EU countries will realize that military spending needs to be increased and armies put back in good shape. It would be huge waste of money in other times but these days peace seems more and more fragile. Bullies only understand strength talk.

f0xytr0xy 5y ago
The EU kimd of screwed Türkiye. Turks took in 4 million syrian refugees and promised not to let them go to europe in exchange for billions of euros which were never delivered. Now Turkiye has had about 4 million syrian orisonwrs for 6 years and is about to absorb at least a million Afghanis. Turks cant even visit the EU withoit showing their entire Cvs (notarized and translated), financial statements, proof of Turkish housing and proof of education. Meanwhile westerners only have to use an app to get a $20 evisa. The eu are incredibly hypocritical when it comes to Türkiye. It wasnt so long ago that England tried to steal all of Turkiye, luckily ataturk whooped their colonial asses and sent them home with their limey tails between their legs.
- EvilEy3 5y ago
  > Turks cant even visit the EU withoit showing their entire Cvs (notarized and translated), financial statements, proof of Turkish housing and proof of education. > Meanwhile westerners only have to use an app to get a $20 evisa. Gee, I wonder why.

f0xytr0xy 5y ago

Non-white? Uhh, Turks are from the caucuses. I think you mean non-christian / non-jewish

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
selimthegrim 5y ago
Anatolians yes, not original Turks, Bulgars etc
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Vast majority of turkish citizens are anatolians though
baybal2 5y ago
I think you got the idea, this is nonsensical to the point of being silly. "Being biologically white is not yet enough to be "politically white" for the Western old boy's club." This stands so past common sense, biology, sanity, and reason that I feel it's safe to assume that nobody on the intellectual level of HN readers will loose sleep over it. The point is the people who throw racial attributes left, and right in politics are so far past the common sense that you cannot expect that they target ears of sane people.
rjsw 5y ago
The Turks were definately considered "non-white" during the Brexit campaign.