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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

What power vacuum? What power projection is Turkey really capable of?

The parent is saying that Turkey will fall into Russia's (or maybe China's) orbit. I'm not sure how accurate that is because Russia backs Assad and Turkey is against them. There'd also be some tension in the Iran/Russia/Turkey triangle.

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.

It has the second largest army in the NATO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_NATO

Even in a cold war scenario though, I can't imagine that army was ever intended for anything other than defending Turkey and looking after their own interests.

They have successfully played the west in exchange for a few US air bases.

Turkey is a huge trading partner to the US and not really a rival. They make the chassis to our next-gen fighter planes, for example. Why toss that aside?

Why toss that aside? I actually didn't know that the chassis for the F-35 is manufactured in Turkey. Do you have a source for this? If this is the case then it seems incredibly shortsighted to source a critical component from half-way around the world - from a country that obviously doesn't like us very much.

https://www.f35.com/global/participation/turkey-industrial-p...

That's the way these things tend to work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

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...

> Turkey is a huge trading partner to the US

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.

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