What's the deal with Turkey?

So Turkey both claims itself as the prary homeland of the Turkish people leading the other Turkish nations. At the same time Turkey claims a spot in the EU.

At the same time Turkey has land claims against Greece. It also has active rivalry with Russia if I understand correctly, and holds millions of middle eastern refugees/immigrants within it's territory.

At the same time currently Turkey is very conservative in political sphere and has seen it's economy crash due to a push to remove economic dependency on the west at breakneck pace mixed with religious ideals regarding interest rates.

Meanwhile turkeys drone program is doing very well and Turkey seems to be a key player in Military weapons development where it fills the niche for countries that either cannot afford or do not have access to European/ US weapons systems yet would like something more dependable and newer than what the Russians offer.

Due to it's geographical location Turkey acts as the gate between the middle east and Europe proper. It maintains hostile relations with Syria and Armenia at it's eastern border. With turbulent relations with Iraq.

The closest thing to an ally it appears to have at it's border is Iran, a nation itself acting as a sanction sponge with a crippled economy.

Turkey also suffered a coup attempt in 2016 and the Turkish leader is of the belief that the US is behind trying to change the Turkish political leadership via subterfuge.

This naturally places Turkey in a west antagonistic position in it's current form.

So Turkey is a nation which cannot completely rely on the west nor completely identify with the east. Which places it in a position of being a middling empire similar to Russia with very limited scope for development in a world which is still growing and moving forward.

Without taking in Turkey accepting Georgia into the EU becomes an impossibility due to lack of geographical connection, unless the western chunk of Russia was to break away and join the EU.

The other factor that comes into account is that the European bureaucracy may not consider Turkey part of Europe proper at all and may not care to add it anytime in the next 4-5 decades.

This may be useful as it geographically limits the EU to fully integrating and developing the rest of Europe first before it expands into the middle east.

However we are here to discuss Turkey.

Turkey, in it's expansionist drive, may have a high chance of success with military operations and land takeover in the bordering regions of Syria, Iraq, and Armenia. Of these Syria and Armenia are the most viable, two regions which were previously strongly supported by Russia in their claims to maintaining sovereignty via threat of force to any attackers by the Russians.

However, with the Russian economy in chaos, a doorway has been opened for years to come for Turkey to expand military operations into the East with far greater ease than ever before.

It is likely that in the middle east Turkish Iranian cooperation leads to a pseudo alliance which further limits the influence Saudi Arabia has in the middle east and thus the influence the west has in the middle east. This keeping the middle east in a further decades long limbo.

However there is another fiture risk for Turkey, which is that the European armies have seen a boost in funding as a response to Russian aggression, but at the end of the current conflict it is likely that Russia will no longer be in a position to invade for decades to come, which means that there is a large well funded EU army with Turkey as the only real rival in the region. However, once again it is unlikely that the EU would go as far as to invade Turkey, as it already acts as a gateway separating the EU from the challenges of sharing a border with the middle east.

In conclusion, Turkey's economy will likely not fully recover to past peak for 20 to 30 years, it has scope to expand into the middle eastern regions of Syria and Armenia and becoming a major player in the region, and will likely continue to maintain it's identity as a middling power with diminishing comparative strength for years to come until the EU decides to do something with it.

Disagree with something I said? Have your own thoughts that you want to add? Please do tell. Let's discuss.

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