Turkey’s wavering positions hold huge geopolitical implications

Hey everybody, Peter Zion here coming to you from just below James peak in the James peak wilderness. Today we’re going to talk turkey, there’s been a lot of motion in that part of the world in the not too distant past, in the lead up to the NATO Summit and Vilnius during the summit and days after the Turks have changed their positions on a number of significant issues with huge regional implications. So just a quick rundown. The Turks have said that they’re going to intervene in green shipments coming out of Ukraine. Now, there has been a deal that the Russians, Ukrainians and the UN have agreed to that allows Ukrainian grain to leave Ukrainian ports, and not get shot out by Russian ships, as long as the Russian ships can inspect the ships on the way on the way out to make sure that they’re not engaged in any sort of smuggling. The Russians have been backing, that agreement is basically more abundant this point and with the Turks have doubted that they will increase the garlis of what the Russians do. Interesting, putting out the possibility that we might actually have military action between the two navies of the two countries, which would be you know, far more dramatic than anything that has happened with NATO in the Ukraine war so far. Second, the Turks are no longer serving as a middlemen for a lot of financial transfers and good transfers from the rest of the world to watch out. They have traditionally traditional emergencies during the war to this point, they have been the weak spot in the NATO wall, if you will. And anything you must do to tell it to Russia or something that’s under sanctions, would be sold to Turkey first, and forwarded on the question in violation of the sanctions are really to do with Edward Elgar doing that, in addition, the turkey, but Sweden can join NATO, are they walking that now for over a year and all of a sudden, it just evaporated. Now, a lot of people realize we’re now talking about how the church or the club, though, statements are mature and probably just completely wrong. And the reason is, the Turks are their own. Now, unlike the Western world, or the Russia world, with a very clear geography that binds everyone together, the Turks have their own. The seat of memoria region and Eastern Thrace are one of the richest chunks of agricultural land in the world. It’s got a navigable waterway system, and it straddles a number of retail trade routes. So the perks are always going to matter. Whoever controls these areas, all of us can read pallets. But its area is not endless. This is not the American Midwest, something that allows you to project power globally. This is a zone that is bracketed by a number of other regions that all matter via G in the Caucasus, southern Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula, the Balkans, Mesopotamia, the Levant, the Turks, and project and do project power into all of these regions. But the CMR region is not sufficiently powerful to give the Turks the ability to project in all of them. And so Turkish foreign strategic policy has always been about making choices. And that means they have to evaluate their neighborhood on a case by case basis. And those evaluations have to be updated from time to time. Well, if you go back to 1015 years ago, we had the start of the Syrian civil war. And the Turks were very upset with the entire Western coalition because of the war and what had led to it. The Turks didn’t want to see an independent Kurdistan. But the Americans relied upon the Kurds of Northern Iraq in order to fight part of the war against Saddam Hussein. And with the Syrian civil war, you had again, a Kurdish enclave in northeast Syria, that basically existed under Western de facto sponsorship. There were also Spats was with the Israelis to a degree backed by the United States and the Europeans. And so the Turks entered into a period where they found it easier to predict power south into areas where the Americans and the Europeans were not being very successful. In that sort of environment, there is a softness in relation with the Russians, because the Russians were perceived at the time as being a bit on a roll, and the Turks found it easier to accommodate the Russians rather than to stand against them. Well, in the last year and a half, a whole lot of things have changed. Number one, the Americans are losing interest in Iraq and to a lesser degree Syria, meaning that the de facto sponsorship of the Kurds is weakened quite a bit. The Russians have shown themselves to be not nearly as impressive as they look like they work and with Ukrainians doing a better better and better day by day by day. The Turks are wondering whether or not it’s really worth the effort, especially in the face of strong American opposition. During and lead up to the summit, the Biden administration. From the very top, we’re talking here, the President and Secretary Yellen, the Treasury Secretary made it very clear to the Turks, what would happen to their banks if they continued serving as middlemen for the Russians. And since then, many of those banks are linked to the ruling party, it bad message was taken loud and clear. So the costs and benefits have changed. And all of a sudden, the Turks are looking at this in a different light. So all of a sudden, the South is not wide open and open to fissures that they can exploit. Suddenly, relations with the Israelis are a little bit better. Suddenly, the Turks are evaluating the Russians from a different point of view, and seeing them as perhaps the weak spot in their periphery these days. And so we’ve seen a lot of changes. And of course, with the summit, everyone was together, and everyone’s gonna have these conversations in real time, as regards to the United States, and negotiations about the transfer of f6 teens to Turkey, were off the table, because there were concerns that are going to be used against the Kurdish minority, or against countries that the United States really didn’t want the Turks going to war with, all of a sudden, that’s back on the docket. The Canadians have restarted negotiations on drone transfers military technology to help make drones. Now, these are the same drones that the Turks have been transferring to Ukraine over the last year and a half. But the reason that Canadians have had an embargo on it is because two years ago, the Turks had transferred them to the ESPYs, yachties and their war with Armenia. All of a sudden, everyone’s getting along again. And we’ll probably see some warming in relations between the Europeans and the Turks as well. And a number of issues that deal with the visa is that migration and everything else. Anyway, the bottom line of all of this isn’t so much that Turkey has flipped. It’s the turkeys evaluation of its neighborhood changes regularly based on the strength, the power, the recession of a fall of every country in their region. And in the last two years, we’ve had a massive shift in the power balance. And it would be strange to think that the Turks would not adjust accordingly. Now, winners and losers, it all depends upon who you are and what you care about. Obviously, the West broadly is pleased with the direction that the Turks are going right now. And there’s reason to believe that this has some legs. But if you’re on the other side of the equation, especially if you’re in interest of the Russians, all of a sudden this is really scary. So for example, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijanis are ethnically Turkic, the Turks consider them their ethnic brotherhood and their friends. The Armenians on the other hand, are the complete opposite. And now that you’ve got countries like Canada, saying it might be okay for us, your weapon systems in the Armenia Azerbaijan conflict, if you are India that in many ways the world’s a John that is coming high off of the last war when the turkey that’s probably going to start shipping weapons in mass again, at a Russia who has been at war who all of a sudden is up to its eyeballs and a problem that it can’t solve in Ukraine. Things like this are going to be Sharif staking out across the entire region as the larger geopolitics evolves. Okay, that’s it.