Turkey is the GOAT for every metric that matters in the region. If the U.S. does indeed abandon NATO, they are the second largest. They are larger than all their Mideast neighbor combined in economy and military power.
Peter reiterates what anyone who ever played Sid Meier’s Civilization knows; this region is pivotal. Turkey is the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Levant, the controller of the Bosphorus … and it is an only recently defunct empire. There are Turkish centenarians who were born during the last years of the Ottoman empire, which is having a renaissance in everything but its name.
Today’s Tripolar Power Struggle was written twelve years ago … needs an update, but it ain’t wrong.
And I have not begun to digest what it means to have Assad gone, with the attendant end of Russia’s long term naval supply station. I thought Russia Prepping To Evacuate Syrian Port Of Tartus was imminent in late 2012, but it took the end of the Syrian civil war, not the start, for that to finally come to pass.
Modern Turkey is also good to review, but this region was my focus in 2012 - 2014, so there are many branches to the rabbit hole that is this old Wordpress site of mine.
