The whole Turkey situation

 I've not written much on matters of international politics for the past several years because things went by the byside, and I got distracted. But my interests still lie there, particularly the middle east which was the area of concentration in my undergrad studies.

So this whole situation with Turkey. Turkish Pres Erdogan henceforth called Erdo thinks he's a master chess player in 9D and can play his rivals against each other. Well, parties he considers his rivals and pretends to be allies. So he'll buy missiles from Russia, who is Turkey's number one existential threat and in no way I bet seen by Turkish nationalists as a deep and reliable friend, and then buy plans from America who the Turks hate because America and their anti-Western ideologies. And then egg the US on, pretending to support them in one meeting, and then doing the opposite on the other. More recently, his tilt seems to have favored Russia far too strongly.

That's caused a whole lot of recalculation from the EU and America, and the US has strengthened defense ties with Greece, who will be Turkey's primary victims in any act of military aggression. Besides the small barely organized groups in Syria that is. And he also pretended to have ejected 10 western ambassadors but undid that because of course I doubt if any of those countries would have back-filled the position. Only reason the US considers Turkey a strategic asset is because there are US Nuclear Missiles inside an American military base in Turkey.

Anyway, the Turkish Lira has depreciated by a comical amount in the last few years, comical for a 'normal' 'industrializing' country. The problem with Turkey and Erdo is that they think they've reached the status of a first-rate global power because they can bully around their neighbors and pretend they're on par with the big people club by sabre-rattling against Egypt, Israel, whatever. That's like reasonable if they had the military strength and projection abilities to back their confidence, but they don't.

In any case, the only good thing that might come out of the whole fucking situation is if the lira gets too cheap, but the inflation there remains decent so visiting there would be a super duper cheap trip. Otherwise, it's a bad deal for the Turks, and Turkey's neighbors. Get the madman out of the chair, people!