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Comment by jorblumesea | Hacker News Reader

Turkey is actually the cold war relic, not NATO. They were mostly added for geopolitical reasons. The US wanted control of the Bosphorus, and that meant all sorts of concessions to Turkey. They were also more secular and more aligned with "Western values" back then. Today, Turkey is a very different country and with the AKP party, it's questionable how much they align with the West, both ideologically and politically.

NATO was and still is a liberal democratic Western nations military alliance about standardizing military doctrine and protocol. If not NATO, something like it needs to exist as a bulwark against Russia and China.

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Nonsense. Turkey allied with the United States when Soviet demands post-WWII induced the republic to seek a security guarantee for eastern anatolia. This occurred prior to any formal NATO membership and turkey previously demonstrated its alliance commitments by supporting the united nations in korea. Turkey wouldn't have allowed nuclear weapons to be based on its territory because of 'concessions'(in fact, they protested their removal after the cuban missile crisis).

Since the Bosphorus/black sea region is vulnerable to a blockade traffic to the Mediterranean sea can be easily closed by the US Navy in times of war regardless of the political regime that controls the straits. Turkey was far more geopolitically important when Russia had a Mediterranean ally(france) and control of the mediterranean was contested.

The AKP is by no means an overwhelming majority party (if it is a majority at all) and Turkey has the potential to be a liberal secular state (it was formed as such by Attaturk), and probably would be today if they had been allowed to join the EU.

I think it still has potential but Edrogen's dictatorship and the AKP are rapidly eroding some of those ideas. There are two Turkeys, the cosmopolitan cities and the rural country (from which AKP hails from).

In order to maintain power, Islam is being used to promote national identity and ethnocentrism. It is also being heavily taught in schools.

This is a pretty good write up: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14683857.2019.1...

Probably the best summary is a kletocratic state that leans Islamic and authoritarian, but never is completely Islamic or authoritarian.

That ship has long sailed.

No, that ship has currently sailed. It may come back again. (Or maybe I'm just a crazy optimist.)

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