I love this analogy. While Turkey can't spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy smart missiles, it innovated to protect herself.

Its allies used to rent drones for surveillance against terrorism, then used it as both a carrot and a stick. Now, Turkey has its own drones that regularly take down targets effectively, even some air defenses.

After Syrian war started and "modern western liberal democracies" failed to help with the refugee crises, those borders became even more treacherous.