Turkey’s entire economy is like half the size of New York City’s. And in any case, ejection from NATO doesn’t mean comprehensive sanctions.

What planes do the Turkish Airforce use?

What tanks, APCs, and helicopters does the Turkish Army use?

Where is most of Turkey's naval fleet manufactured?

Turkey has been working on indigenization and diversifying it's procurement by buying from Italy, Spain, and France, but it is still heavily dependent on American weapons systems.

Relations between the US and Turkiye deteriorated severely after the US began supporting the YPG (which imo was a stupid move by the Trump admin), but there is still a mutual dependency, with the US giving Turkey protection against Russia (with whom they are fighting against in a couple proxy wars like in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, etc), and the US dependent on Turkiye for Central Asia and Middle Eastern power projection.

The real world isn't a game of Civ where you are either friends or foes. In reality there exists multiple layers of grey. Furthermore, public denouncements or displays of support don't necessarily translate to positive or negative action.

A good example is Turkiye-Israel relations. Erdogan will always denounce Israel and the "Zionists", but at the end of the day, Turkey and Israel have extremely strong defense relations as both are heavily involved in Azerbaijan (Turkey because they view Azeris as brothers, and Israel because of Iran).

It's the same for US-Turkiye relations. Erdogan has to publicly appear anti-American due to his base's memories of the American supported Turkish Armed Forces violently repressing Islam until the 90s, but in actual actions, there is a mutual dependency. There's a reason why most of the younger generation of Erdogan's family attended IU Bloomington.

Please, do not succumb to this kind of statements. Erdogan does not support ISIS, but he does not support YPG or PKK either. So when he did not take active action why is he portrayed as ISIS supporter? Did not Turkey do enough to host and feed people from Kobane and treated the wounded Kursdish fighhters? Turkey simply did not want to enter the mess deeper (But we are already in anyway..)

He knows that he cannot be a Caliph or such, maybe he had the melancholy of the Ottoman times, but that's past already.

And getting further from that sweet spot every day. Your president and his children quite openly supported ISIS and heavily profited from it. There are tons of proofs out there. Rest doesn't matter - he is evil, shakes hands with evil, profits from it and supports it. How many billions of $$ (that he stole from Turkish citizens like yourself) do you think he holds in amoral tax havens around the globe? You might not have enough fingers to represent it.

I can't change politics of EU nor my own country, but I'll vote with my money - I'll never set a foot in that country so I won't support their economy. Plenty of dictators out there already.

To think this country wanted to be part of EU. What an effin' joke. You guys have no clue what democracy, freedom and equality means. If Turkey would be taken in, then we can take Syria or Pakistan too

Also, as it Turns out Turkey does have its own flourishing defence industry and the Brits are helping Turkey to actually build it's own gen 5 warplane and Russia is offering to sell some.

That's the catch with nationalism and authoritarian governments: The citizens are willing to endure economic pain in the name of patriotism and the US doesn't seem to bring much of that anyway.

The US-led world order seems to be vanishing and it's scary when you know some of the alternatives.

Please substantiate. Turkey is a NATO member which, other than the recent kerfuffle with downing a Russia fighter jet, has decent relations with most of its neighbours, and no real Great Enemies. Turkey has always had a press-repressive (!!) orientation because they've wanted to keep internal Islamist forces at bay. Amusing, Erdogan has flipped the script and now it's his Islamist government which is cracking down on other voices, although the take-over of the Zaman news organization is really about internal fighting with an influential cleric. But either way, in the end, Turkey has always had authoritarian governments succeeded by military coups and more authoritarian rule.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better about it. The fact is that they did revolt, and they were massively repressed. It happened just before Ukraine blew up; and nobody in the US establishment cared one little bit.

Ataturk is long dead. The secular army and judiciary have been cut to size by de-facto dictator Erdogan, who uses Islam in the way less-enlightened countries have done for decades now. The hard truth is that Turkey is now the new Saudi Arabia: a country NATO cannot live without, but ruled by people supporting interests and values very different from official "Western" ones.

The view here in Europe is that we've basically given up on Turkey as a secular partner, and they will never be allowed to join the EU while Erdogan is around; but NATO can't do without them, and that's a big problem.

That's not a given. Turkey's military has staged quite a few coups over the years and that's really part of their purpose in the Turkish government order. After a few years power usually transitions back to normal democratic elections.

And I said since 2003. Before the coup attempt ( in 2016 ), his actions boosted turkey economy 5X. It has slipped since the coup attempt but that's to be expected. Political stability is required for economy prosperity.

> It’s not like putting 100k political opponents in prison is a boost to the economy.

What should he do with coup plotters? Throw them a parade?

* If you don't know about Erdogan, theres too much for a HN thread.

* The 1936 Montreux Convention allows Turkey to deny any country at war (not with Turkey) to deny warship passage, except to return home.

* Turkey is an incredibly important part of NATO because of their ability to choke Black Sea access.

* This has kept Russia's warm warm navy in check, particularly for the Ukraine conflict

* NATO requires Democracy and "Rule of Law" for member nations

* NATO has never had to remove a member state, and honestly nobody is sure how that'd happen

* The US leases airbases in Turkey, with nuclear penetration bombers and nuclear warheads stored on site.

* Russia has always seen this as a double standard when the US complains about Russia putting nukes in places like Belarus.

* Trump denied Turkey access to the F-35 program because they chose to install S400 systems from Russia.

* Credit due were credit due, military analysts generally agree this was a good decision, and it was at the request of bi-partisan lawmakers.

* The thought was Russia could profile F-35 fighter's radar returns somehow with S400 systems

* This is _in spite_ of Turkey committing funds to the F-35 program, which to this date, said funds have not been returned to Turkey.

> I disagree, see my comments about astute businessmen not using yes-men above. No worries if we don't agree here. Countries are most certainly businesses. They're in the business of acquiring people who generate money.

Right, but that is assuming that Erdogan is trying to do what is best for the country in the long term. Many would argue his primary concern is Erdogan's interests in the short term.

They should have been able to shoot it down. However that they werent able to do so and encountered problems with their aircraft suggests outside intervention. Erdogan being aware that his location was being targeted by the coup's special forces and swiftly moving away from there is another indicator to that end. Which are likely reasons why Turkey is quite friendly with Russia at the moment - the only power that has enough intelligence strength and the means to jam equipments of aircraft.

>Those would include allowing a free press, an independent judiciary and returning powers to Parliament

Not that it wouldn't be nice to see those reforms, but it seems like they just slipped that claim in without much justification. China does fine with an autocratic system, as do others. I'm just puzzled that this wishful thinking that economic prosperity is necessarily connected to political freedoms still persists. Would be nice it if were true, but doesn't seem so.

After US refused to sell PAC 3 despite Istanbul pleading for it since even before Erdogun

Yeah, and for the better. The coup attempt is very controversial and it's not good guys vs bad guys situation.

To be fair, the west cheered for Erdogan up until Erdogan completely abandoned his initial positions. Later, the west simply worked with Turkey and Erdogan was properly elected through the years.

What the West was supposed to do? Invade Turkey? Assassinate the politician who consistently got about %50 of the vote of the Turks on elections with no less than %85 voter turnaround?

Foreign influence cannot solve local problems.

It would never happen. Turks are Turks first and Muslim second. Erdogan is a neo-ottomanist, not a salafist.

He’s as much of a Muslim as Trump is a Christian.

Now I do see him trying to sell more of the nation to Saudis and Emirates while also forcing enough pro-sunni legislation down our throats to keep the Conservative / Nationalists happy and ensure that Saudi / Qatari investment coming and to ensure he can profit like a bandit off of his pre-doomed “Islamic Finance” initiatives.

However, Turks are fairly centrist by American standards. They drink, a lot (alcohol tax revenue is crucial to the government, as well as direct sales as the government still owns some of the Raki and Beer production), smoke weed, party, are getting married and having children later in life, and fewer.

I watched the sweaty shirtless guys beating mislead soldiers to death during the failed coup a few years ago. They weren’t shouting allahu akbar while they did it. They waved Ataturk flags and sang the Izmir march.

The design is Turkish, the software is Turkish and some parts are Turkish others are from suppliers from all over the world. If that's not clear enough, ask yourself what makes iPhone an American product. It's the IP, Suppliers can change.

That's why other countries are buying it from Turkey instead of ordering the parts from Alibaba and assemble. Why do you think that Armenians couldn't assemble their own "Turkish UAV" and use them against Azerbaijan? Didn't have screwdrivers to put together the parts?

About the whatabautism part of your question, Turks are indeed quite xenophobic. Yet, hosting so many refugees that makes about %5 to %10 of the country's population. If the USA hosted that many refugees, their number would have been from 16 million to 32 million. Turks are not happy about that, the latest polls show that about %80 of the Turks want the refugees gone.

Turks are not any less xenophobic that the Western nations, happy about that? The US elected Trump to get rid of the immigrants, EU got to the brink of collapse at the first million of Syrian. Turks might not be less xenophobic from the Westerners but they are resilient enough to take one for the team.

The poverty in Turkey has become rampant, the country does have a large number of poor people and rich people, the middle class with similar buying power to the western middle class has evaporated. So what? That's why Erdogan would be gone in a year or two. Erdogan is not taking the drones with him.

Imagine thinking you are Napoleon and this banker or economist tells you to stop waging war. You will think that you need to silence this busy body for your noble mission.

That may be true, but the intermediate will be extremely messy, to put it mildly.