But now, with Eastern Europe and the Baltics part of NATO there are better options and Turkey's membership should be reviewed.
Turkey have many problems dealing with its minorities, neighbours, even its own citizens, sure - but on this issue, maybe its time to get off your high horse, before calling any country nefarious. Are we really worse than Spain, worse than France, worse than UK? Why do they have a say in it without helping the problem in the slightest?
We used to pay people handsomely to get our hands on Russian weaponry to play with.
IMHO, I don't think we should care that much. The middle East's importance is waning and it's been nothing but trouble for 50 years. Better to step back and let others play the game.
They have successfully played the west in exchange for a few US air bases.
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.
This said, Turkey is being removed from the supply chain. Of course, this comes at about a a half a billion in costs... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-turkey-security-f35/p...
Considering Turkey's strategic location, it's better to have Turkey in NATO instead of as an adversary, even if its leadership doesn't align with the values of other NATO members.
Erdogan knows that he has a ton of leverage and chooses to maximize his advantage.
There are a lot of moving pieces here. He's overcalculated a bit and his nationalist policy has hurt the Turkish economy.
Likewise, many European countries rejecting Turkey's EU bids last decade on thinly-veiled Islamaphobic pretenses only strengthened his nationalist message at home.
The west knows it, but they also know that they would rather have Turkey nominally on their side than not.
It will probably take cooler heads and or a major economic downturn to shift that sentiment. Until then, Turkey maintains its seat in NATO.
If this were true why do ME refugees not want to stay there?
>Largest army in Europe.
Okay, but if they're more culturally similar to the ME, as your first point implies, than to e.g. Germany doesn't it become a little problematic for employing this army in NATO's current theater of operations?
>Erdogan still has to restrain himself because he has treaties with NATO allies...
This is a great argument for why entangling alliances with people who aren't really your friends or are too culturally distant to even pretend as much are a terrible, awful idea. I believe we fought a World War because of this once.
But to answer your question, Erdogan not the coolest dude ever. Plus Turkey doesn't have the greatest history of human rights especially if you aren't Turkic in ethnicity. Just ask the Armenians, Greeks and Kurds(very much related to this issue). All of which happened in the last 100 years.
In short, if you are getting displaced why not go the extra distance? Just because you've been violently displaced from your home (and everything you know) doesn't mean you can't have upward mobility ::eyeroll::.
In Europe, west of it, they could earn much more. They don't want to go Romania either for example.
People tend to forget that. Thanks for articulating it so well.
And to add - indeed it's not the fault of the Turkish citizens who are against the tyranny, and those are who we need to align with and help support. Likewise, the US needs support from the world to help counter the bad actors we have here. Or we can all just be angry at "everyone" and rage against innocent people - and watch the whole world burn.