Turkey’s new world order ideas in hard clash with reality
Ankara will soon have to choose between Russia and a militarily much more efficient Nato
Since the botched coup attempt of July 2016, a widespread scepticism of the US has pushed Turkish policymakers to conceptualise a world order where Ankara would carve out a sizeable degree of strategic autonomy from the West — despite Turkey’s membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato). This line of thinking has led to a burgeoning relationship with Russia, crowned by the purchase of the S-400 missile-defence system.
But the escalating conflict over Idlib, where Turkey is seeking to protect its zone of influence against the advance of the Russian-backed Syrian army, has put the feasibility of this vision to the severest of tests...
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