Some Western analysts blame Turkey’s cooling with America and the West on Russia, as if Turkey being “wooed” by Russia would change anything. The truth is simply that times have changed, and the regional and global balance of power has changed, and also that Erdogan has successfully changed Turkey’s view of itself. Turkey no longer looks to be Western, or part of Europe. Turkey once again sees itself as a leading nation in the Islamic world. Nostradamus suggests that Turkey will reclaim that role in WWIII. 21st century analysts agree that Turkey has little reason to fear Russia as it did 70 or 100 years ago, and that it has given up on joining the West and being accepted as an equal partner by Europe and America. As Dmitry Minin said at Zerohedge and originally at the Strategic Culture Foundation:
“…the reasons for Turkey’s growing frustration with its efforts to cooperate with its Western partners, including the United States, run deeper…. All these elements of their “bilateral rapport” have now turned into factors of their alienation. For example, the Turkish government considers the US government to be fully to blame for the failure of the “Arab spring,” a stance that it takes, apparently, in part in order to sidestep criticism from its own citizens. In any event, there is now no serious cooperation between Ankara and Washington to speak of. Each acts at its own risk and peril.
…Due to the oscillations of American policy in Syria, the local branch of the PKK – the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) – has suddenly become the US administration’s main bedrock of support there. And this is perhaps the biggest irritant for the Turks. Suffice it to say that the Americans failed to meet their obligation to move the Kurds east of the Euphrates River and out of Manbij and Tabqa. The promise they made to Ankara to disarm the Kurds after the defeat of IS has also been unabashedly left hanging. The Turks deeply dislike being deceived. There is an ever-growing possibility that the US and Turkey, which are “NATO allies,” will become embroiled in an indirect armed conflict (!) through their “proxies” from the pro-Turkish FSA and the pro-American SDF.
Surveys conducted in Turkey by the American Pew Research Center show that 72% of Turks consider the US to be a threat to their country’s security. This is a world record, hands down.
The post-war {Russian] threats to Turkey’s security that at one time prompted its close integration with Western institutions, including NATO, simply do not exist today. And they are unlikely to reemerge.
The real dangers for Turkey all come from a completely different direction – the Middle East. And to a large extent those dangers can be blamed on the actions of Ankara’s Western allies, who, instead of providing security, have become agents of destabilization. Perhaps the discussion today should be more about finding protection from them, not about joint-defense operations with them.
From the standpoint of Turkey’s real interests, gradual rapprochement with its regional neighbors – Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Russia, as well as with global unions such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – may be more promising. Although some might currently view this drift as a mere episode, it is in fact quite a logical development, based on objective criteria and which may well prove to be long-term.”
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