Focus on Turkey (Turkiye)

The geopolitical topic which I find most fascinating today involves Turkey.

A confluence of events, it political positioning and its strategic assets and alliances are worth noting.

President Erdogan fires the ‘central bank’;

President Biden labels Turkish actions in Armenia 1915 (a Christian country) as ‘genocide’;

Armenia remains a NATO ally yet has a Russian military base within it;

Turkey is friends with Russia (it likes its TurkStream pipeline);

Turkey and Russia have good economic relations;

Biden is pondering sanctions against Germany to hinder Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline;

other assets such as the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline conveniently bypass’ Armenia;

Turkey’s ejection from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program places pressure (spare parts) on maintaining their F-16 jets (the world’s 3rd largest fleet of that type);

Turkey and Pakistan relations are good and those with Iran are strong;

overnight Turkey launches new raids against militant Kurds in Northern Iraq;

while Turkey proceeds to build an alternative shipping route (the Istanbul Canal) to the Bosphorus,

and 2 crypto exchanges based in Turkey have collapsed this week.

See how it all ties in together and that’s only a part of it.

More to write later.

April 25, 2021
by Rob Zdravevski
rob@karriasset.com.au