Turkey’s strategic location has historically made it indispensable to the West. However, rising tensions and geopolitical shifts, including Turkey’s potential departure from NATO, could leave the alliance weakened, particularly against Russia, as provoked by NATO’s expansion following the 2014 Ukraine coup and turning a blind eye to the plight of the Palestinian people which brings humanity to the possibility of World War III.

The U.S. and NATO, without Turkey, would become far more vulnerable, leaving them scrambling to maintain dominance in regions like Georgia, and severely inhibiting the US ability to support its new ally, Armenia. The current political climate could easily escalate into a larger global conflict, fuelled by short-sighted leadership, territorial disputes, and the breakdown of international diplomacy.

NATO is heavily reliant on Turkey’s strategic position, the size of its standing army, and how many men it has in reserve. Its potential departure could result in severe consequences for the alliance’s ability to threaten neighbouring states, and project power, especially in the Middle East.

The growing instability in global hotspots and the threat of nuclear conflict indicate that the world is already in the early stages of a broader conflict, which requires urgent diplomatic efforts to avoid—yet western countries remain hindered by entrenched selfish geopolitical interests.

Turkey has made the full circle, in terms of political rhetoric, playing all sides, and is finally coming around to the realization that its use for the West was based on location, especially in terms of how it became one of the early members of NATO, as it was located on the Southern flank of the Soviet Union, and would serve to bottle up the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and reduce the Soviet ability to intervene in the Mediterranean Sea.

The West, the NATO alliance, in spite of having enlarged membership, still remains a hapless paper tiger without Turkey, and if threats of the departure of the second most powerful standing army after the US in the alliance would come to fruition, the US and its colonies are left floundering as proverbial ‘shark........

© New Eastern Outlook