The 2020s and Its Historic Shift: Turkey’s Evolution
By: George Friedman
The Anatolian Peninsula was once the center of one of the most powerful empires in history.
The Ottoman Empire lasted from the 14th century until World War I, after which it collapsed and was subsequently occupied by British and Allied forces.
The political movement that resisted occupation would by 1923 win its independence, coalescing into the nation-state we now call Turkey.
In the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire controlled the Balkans and southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, the South Caucasus, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Its rulers built the empire by leveraging a large, capable military to exploit the divisions and weaknesses among and within the nations of these regions.
But the true foundation of the empire was the strategic position and the relative stability of Turkey itself.
History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes, according to Mark Twain.
A rhyme does not have to be anywhere as large as the original poem.
And because Turkey retains its strategic position – situated south of the Balkans, north and west of the Middle East, abutting the Black Sea but with practically sole stewardship of the Bosporus – the country has the potential to become a significant power again.
Over the final 100 or so years of the empire, the Ottomans’ greatest enemy was Russia, with which they had fought a dozen wars throughout their history.
The Ottomans fought Russia again in World War I.
They avoided World War II but soon joined NATO during the Cold War.
But Turkey is no longer content to maintain a large standing military; it is building a nationally sustained, multidomain force.
Now that Russia is a shadow of the threat it once was, Turkey has been more active in its near abroad.
It boasts military bases in Albania, Iraq, Qatar, Somalia and North Cyprus, and in 2020, it deployed troops to help manage the civil war in Libya.
It is also actively engaged in Syria militarily.
Turkey has the second-largest military of any NATO country, second only to the United States, with an estimated 480,000 active soldiers in the army and 380,000 reserves.
Its navy includes 45,000 active duty personnel, 13 submarines, 17 frigates and nine corvettes, with more on order.
It has a far less robust air force, though it is seeking to remedy that too.
Turkey’s greatest weakness is its economy, which grew for years before succumbing to a variety of structural challenges, including currency devaluation, inflation and high interest rates.
Even so, it ranks as the 16th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product and 12th by purchasing power. It was also a founding member of the G20.
So while the government in Ankara has some problems to figure out, it will be able to figure them out from fairly sound footing.
Geopolitically, Turkey’s greatest advantage is that no one in its immediate vicinity is a threat.
The only potential threat – Israel – is too preoccupied by a multifront war to worry too much about Turkey.
And because the rest of the surrounding region is so divided, Ankara has the opportunity to influence outcomes directly.
Crucially, it is under no existential pressure to exert its will; rather, it has the choice to influence regional events politically or militarily at its discretion.
Whereas Poland has geopolitical imperatives, Turkey has geopolitical options.
It also has some geopolitical challenges, not least of which is internal instability.
While calmer than some of its neighbors, its political system is given to occasional unrest and military coups.
In the southeast, Kurdish-majority provinces threaten to form a non-Turkish community that traditionally has been hostile toward Ankara.
This explains why Turkey is already inching toward accommodation with them.
The major challenge for Turkey is to improve its economy.
There is a geopolitical dimension to this issue.
The wealthiest country in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia.
It is also one of the most militarily vulnerable countries.
Having both wealth and military weakness is not sustainable, particularly in a region of constant tension and subnational movements.
Wealth and weakness is a dangerous situation.
Wealth can buy off enemies, but it can also attract them.
Saudi Arabia needs to strengthen its position.
The United States has been an ardent Saudi ally, but U.S. support is not necessarily reliable in the long term.
A close relationship between the Saudis and the Turks would solve each other’s problems.
Saudi investment in Turkey on a large scale would greatly ease Turkey's economic problems, while military guarantees from Turkey, the most powerful country in the region (barring Israel’s reemergence from its own affairs), would give Riyadh more security.
Turkey is not likely to abandon Saudi Arabia, but nor does it need to occupy it.
There are risks to a partnership, of course, but each can dictate terms to the other.
In the meantime, Turkey is taking initiative in the Balkans and maintaining very close ties to Azerbaijan, which Turkey supported in its victory in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war with Armenia.
It is on this evolution that I based my forecast in "The Next 100 Years" on the emergence of Turkey as a major power, assuming it is able to acquire a better air force and sustain its growing military industrial sector and its presence in low earth orbit.
So long as it is surrounded by fractious and weaker countries, Turkey can continue its path to greater power.
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario