Losing Turkey

President Erdogan is on his way to Russia for talks with Putin, presumably to improve the Turkish-Russian relationship.  As mentioned in an earlier blog, Turkey and Russia have had a long and contentious relationship.  However, Russia has succeeded in encircling Turkey in the last few years.  Russia has been a booster of Iran, assisting with its nuclear program.  Russia annexed the Crimea, giving it a bigger footprint on the Black Sea.  Of course, back in the Bush Administration, Russia managed to carve out a part of Georgia.  For the last year, Russia has placed forces in Syria, Turkey's neighbor to the south.  How has the United States responded to this constrictor snake tactic?  Empty red lines, toothless proclamations, demands that countries live up to their international obligations.  In short, meaningless rhetoric.

Erdogan has never been a believer in secular Turkey.  He is an Islamist and has sought to undermine Kemalist Turkey for decades.  The recent failed coup is looking more and more like the death knell of secular Turkey.  Again, a largely hands-off America has been a boon to that effort.  The US has been abandoning the Middle East for most of President Obama's tenure and Russia and Iran have been filling that vacuum.  Luckily, domestic fracking has done wonders for American gas prices despite the increasingly turbulent Middle East.

 

In the ongoing real game of thrones, Putin is playing chess and Obama is playing checkers.  Future historians will marvel at how badly our foreign policy was handled.