The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Realpolitik #5 ｜ The Geopolitics Of Turkey

00:00:00.400 Hello and welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host Firas Modad and today

00:00:06.480 the topic is going to be Turkey. Understanding the geopolitics of Turkey, its ambitions now,

00:00:13.680 where it is in terms of pursuing these ambitions and what can we expect in the future. So I think

00:00:18.960 a good place to start is to explain that Turkey is fundamentally the successor state of the Ottoman

00:00:25.520 Empire. You look at the map that you see on your screen, the Ottoman Empire really began in 1481

00:00:32.480 with the capture of Constantinople. It had been there obviously before that. It took over the

00:00:37.600 Byzantine Empire and then it expanded onwards towards Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece etc. Pretty quickly

00:00:46.880 this state became a dominant player in the region. By 1481 it was in control of decent

00:00:55.280 chunks of Europe. You can see that it had reached Bulgaria, it had reached pretty much all of

00:01:01.760 Greece, it had reached Serbia, it had an influence in Crimea and it controlled most of Anatolia.

00:01:09.120 And as time went by this empire really expanded further and faster. It became the most important

00:01:18.960 European state in the Middle East. In the Middle East obviously it took over Lebanon and Syria and

00:01:24.480 then Egypt. It took over the holy places of Islam, Mecca and Medina and obviously Jerusalem. It expanded 0.90

00:01:32.000 further into Europe, into Hungary, into Romania. It really became one of the most important players

00:01:41.760 in European politics as well as in the politics of the Middle East. And this is really down to the

00:01:49.920 location of Turkey itself. It occupies the central position in Asia Minor, Anatolia, whatever you want to

00:01:59.360 call it, that links up the Caucasus, Iran, the Russian sphere and the Black Sea, Europe and North Africa.

00:02:13.200 This location gives Turkey a pretty important role and because Anatolia is so difficult to invade

00:02:20.640 because of its mountainous terrain, it sort of forms a base from which any state can then pursue

00:02:31.840 expansionist ambitions, finding weakness anywhere in its near abroad and trying to fill in the spaces there

00:02:41.120 and to become a more important player in its own neighborhood.

00:02:45.360 So the Turkish Empire, the Ottoman Empire, whatever you want to call it, after decades and centuries of

00:02:54.080 expansion, after becoming the most important, one of the most important global players really,

00:03:00.720 fell upon hard times starting the 1700s, 1800s and then started losing territory. It lost North Africa to the

00:03:09.600 French and to the Italians. It then participated very unwisely in the First World War and the result of the First 0.90

00:03:20.960 World War really was something of a crushing defeat. From the peak of its power, it just kept on losing more

00:03:29.520 and more and more territories until it was reduced to mainly just Anatolia and Syria,

00:03:38.480 Lebanon, Iraq and the coast. Let me show you the correct map here in a second. It lost Egypt in 1882. It retained

00:03:48.880 influence in Libya. It had lost Greece in 1830. By 1912 when the Ottoman Empire decided to join the First World War,

00:03:59.920 it was really a shell of its former self. All it had was bits of Bosnia and Albania here,

00:04:07.680 the coast of the deserts of what is today Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and that was really

00:04:16.640 pretty much it and a few islands off the coast. After World War I and Turkey's crushing defeat,

00:04:23.120 this gentleman Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became the leader of Turkey. He came out of the army. It seemed

00:04:31.440 that his success was miraculous as far as the Turks were concerned. He was in control of just the 1.00

00:04:37.680 territory of the Republic of Turkey as we know it today and he decided that the way to go was to try

00:04:43.280 to modernize Turkey and try to make it a secular European state and cut off its ties with Islam. 0.87

00:04:52.640 Although he was successful in some modernization efforts, the attempt to eradicate Islam from Turkish 1.00

00:04:59.840 Turkish life was really completely unsuccessful. Rather, what we saw was that the Turkish public,

00:05:08.080 for the most part, outside of the urban areas like Istanbul and Ankara and Izmir,

00:05:14.400 really sided with Islam in one way or another. And this led to a long series of coups. In 1960,

00:05:26.080 there was a coup. The prime minister was executed because he was accused of introducing Islam

00:05:32.080 back into political life and undermining the secular ideas of Mustafa Kemal.

00:05:38.080 In 1971, again another coup, 1980, and the last coup was in 1997. Afterwards, in 2001-2002,

00:05:47.840 the current president of Turkey, formerly the prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,

00:05:53.040 took power. And for a decade or so, he worked with the IMF. He privatized the entities that were

00:06:01.760 under the control of the Turkish military. And he very strictly consolidated power. He ended up in

00:06:08.640 control of the judiciary, in control of the military itself, the interior ministry, pretty much all of

00:06:15.680 the organs of state that counted. And he became really the undisputed leader of Turkey and embarked on a

00:06:25.920 major military modernization program intended to make Turkey into a major geopolitical player.

00:06:34.720 In that, he was informed by the ideas of Ahmed Davut Oglou, who at some point was his national

00:06:41.440 security advisor, then foreign minister, then prime minister, before they became enemies. Ahmed Davut Oglou

00:06:48.560 had written a book called Strategic Depth. In that book, he expressed the idea that pretty much the

00:06:57.600 entire Muslim world was really going to be Turkey's sphere of influence or at least a part of the world 0.97

00:07:07.200 where Turkey had major influence. His view was that Turkey's influence should extend into all of Central

00:07:16.320 Asia. So here in Central Asia, you have the Xinjiang province in China, historically known as East Turkestan.

00:07:25.840 You have Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. These are Turkic populations 1.00

00:07:34.160 that speak variants of the Turkish language. They were under the influence of Russia and before that

00:07:41.680 the Soviet Union and before that the Russian Empire, but the Turks saw them as part of their

00:07:47.280 sphere of influence. He believed that this influence extended to Grozny in Chechnya. Let's see if Grozny shows

00:07:56.560 up here on the map. I'm sure it will. His view was that the Russian Muslim population, the Tatar population,

00:08:04.240 the Dagestani population, the Chechen population should all look to Turkey, as well as the population

00:08:10.560 of Crimea. He believed that Turkish influence would extend to Tirana in Albania, as well as obviously to

00:08:18.560 Bosnia and to Sarajevo and to Kosovo. He believed that Syria, Egypt, North Africa and the Muslim part of

00:08:29.760 Africa should all play their role in serving Islam by working in cooperation with the emerging Turkish power,

00:08:42.720 which would become a sort of new Ottoman Empire. So this is the ideology that's governing Turkey today.

00:08:50.880 It is an ideology that believes in Turkishness, so the expansion of Turkish influence all over the Turkic

00:08:59.760 world. So Azerbaijan all the way to the border with China and even Xinjiang province. It believes in 0.82

00:09:09.360 in reconquering the Middle East for Turkey and expanding Turkish power deep into Africa with a view to 0.68

00:09:21.440 using these markets and the natural resources that they provide to feed the Turkish heartland and Anatolia,

00:09:31.200 which would again become a base for the expansion of the ideas of Turkishness and Islam.

00:09:37.920 This is the ideology that's governing Turkey today. This is why the idea of including Turkey in the 0.99

00:09:45.200 European Union is so delusional. First, most obviously, given that Turkey has around 80 something 0.95

00:09:52.000 million people, that would be the biggest population in Europe and Turkey would have more seats in the

00:09:58.240 European parliament than say Germany or France, the two behemoths of Europe. The second part of it is

00:10:06.080 that this would pave the way for the expansion of the influence of Islam in Europe and it would make 1.00

00:10:14.480 Turkey a player in the domestic affairs of pretty much every single European country where there is a

00:10:22.000 large migrant Muslim population. So this is what we see here happening in Turkey. Is this just delusions? 0.95

00:10:29.520 How are the Turks pursuing their claims? It's worth talking for a little bit about how Turkey has been

00:10:36.720 behaving in the last decade and how this connects to geopolitics. And the starting point that I want

00:10:44.640 to use is 2011. In 2011, as I'm sure you remember, unrest began in Tunisia. I believe it was on the 14th

00:10:53.280 of December when a street merchant called Azizi set himself on fire in objection to the way in which the

00:11:03.600 authorities and the authorities and especially the police had been treating him and humiliating him.

00:11:08.400 This triggered a wave of unrest that led to the overthrow of the governments of Egypt, Libya, Yemen,

00:11:16.720 and others, with unrest also breaking out in Syria and in Jordan.

00:11:20.960 One of the outcomes of that unrest was the election of the Muslim Brotherhood government

00:11:25.040 in Egypt in 2012, I believe it was, when one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood,

00:11:32.240 Muhammad Mursi, became the president of Egypt. And this guy invited Erdogan over to visit Egypt,

00:11:38.960 and he was hailed as the new Caliph of the Muslims and as the new leader of the Muslims who would sort of

00:11:46.160 restore Islamic glory. This scared the Egyptian military, they overthrew Mursi, and then Erdogan 1.00

00:11:54.000 realized something important. There wasn't going to be a way to unify the Islamic world under Turkish 1.00

00:12:00.880 leadership without the use of military power. And so he decided to build up that power,

00:12:08.480 but rather than fight directly, he decided to rely on the influence of this gentleman,

00:12:14.720 Hakan Fidan. This guy had a degree in strategy, and he had become the head of Turkish intelligence.

00:12:21.440 And so what the Turks decided to do was to fight wars in a new method, similar to the way in which the

00:12:29.520 Americans had been fighting wars. What do I mean by that? Well, the Turks decided to start sponsoring proxy

00:12:36.320 forces, essentially jihadis, who they could use to influence the outcomes of wars or of conflicts

00:12:45.680 in countries that were important to them, with a view towards getting these jihadis into power 0.59

00:12:52.560 and using that power to bolster Turkish influence and to link these countries, the targeted countries,

00:13:02.560 to Turkey militarily, politically, and economically. And the textbook success case for this would arguably be

00:13:14.000 Syria. In Syria, we saw Turkey using the Syrian jihadis and the radical militant Islamist movements

00:13:27.440 in order to gain a foothold and eventually overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

00:13:35.760 This reached such proportions, really, that the Turks actually had an ambassador from Islamic State

00:13:44.800 operating in Turkey, and this reached such proportions that the Turks eventually had an ambassador

00:13:53.760 from Islamic State operating within Turkey who would coordinate things like the border crossings of

00:14:02.080 jihadi militants into Syrian territory and would organize medical treatment for Islamic State fighters

00:14:12.160 within Turkey, as well as obviously engaging in smuggling and other illicit activities. And this was

00:14:17.760 done under the auspices of MIT, the Turkish intelligence agency, which was led by the man who is today the

00:14:25.120 foreign minister of Turkey, Haqqan Fidan. The result of that was really a spectacular success.

00:14:30.560 Yes, Syria today is under the rule of Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, now known by his actual name, Ahmad al-Shara,

00:14:40.240 and Turkey has a string of bases and a string of observation infrastructure throughout Syria that it is

00:14:49.760 using to put pressure on the Syrian Democratic Forces, that is, the Kurdish forces allied with the United

00:14:57.280 States and potentially one of the United States and potentially one day with Israel. And it's using this in order to 0.66

00:15:02.960 make sure that the Syrian government does exactly what the Turks want them to do and have no choice but to cooperate with Turkey.

00:15:12.960 So we'd said that after the Turks conquered Constantinople, they expanded into Syria.

00:15:21.760 Well, now they've done this again. And this has been met with a pretty spectacular success.

00:15:28.160 And they are now the preeminent player in Syria. In Iraq, the Turks are trying to do something similar.

00:15:36.960 What the Turks are trying to do here is to gain control of the northern part of Iraq, which is 0.87

00:15:47.520 extremely oil rich, especially this region of Kirkuk. They have a presence in northern Iraq where they're

00:15:56.960 fighting the Kurdish Marxist nationalist PKK party. This is a party that wants to carve out a separate

00:16:06.240 state for the Kurds within Turkey. So it's seen as a mortal enemy of the Turkish state and it's seen

00:16:13.040 as something that must be destroyed at all costs. The Turks are engaged in warfare there, slowly weakening

00:16:21.440 the PKK. They've expanded even to have a presence here next to Mosul. Mosul is the most important Sunni 1.00

00:16:30.560 Arab city in Iraq. And they're trying to expand further towards Kirkuk. Kirkuk is where oil was

00:16:38.800 first discovered in Iraq. There's a huge amount of oil there that is being tapped at well below its

00:16:47.200 capabilities. And if the Turks were to manage to control the oil of Kirkuk, they would then be able 0.98

00:16:55.200 to use that to reduce their reliance on Iran and on Russia, which are the main sources of oil that they

00:17:03.760 have in addition to Iraq. And they would then be in a position to pursue their interests against Russia

00:17:11.760 and Iran in a much, much more effective way. So we see Turkey again pursuing the Middle East strategy

00:17:20.880 that is intended to make sure that they have more strategic depth that basically keeps Iran from 0.98

00:17:32.160 expanding into Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and threatening the southern flank of Turkey. They want this strategic

00:17:40.320 depth as well to put a buffer between Egypt, which they view as a future conquest, shall we say,

00:17:50.320 a territory that they can gain control of at some point in the future, if not today. And then,

00:17:57.360 obviously, the ultimate objective or one of the objectives for the Turks is to end up in control of

00:18:04.320 Medina and Mecca, Islam's second and first holy sites, which would then give the Turks their religious

00:18:13.680 legitimacy that they need to claim that they are the leaders of the Muslim world. Now, remember, 0.57

00:18:19.760 because of the memory of the Ottoman Empire, because generally Islam is a religion of warfare and 0.97

00:18:27.600 conquest, at least on some level, the fact that the Turks are having military successes is itself a legitimizing

00:18:37.120 factor. For the Muslim world, you back the strong, and whoever is seen as able to lead the Muslims into future 0.98

00:18:45.120 conquests, well, that is a fundamental source of legitimacy. And so the Turks are able to play this card. 0.98

00:18:52.160 They're able to claim that they are making gains on behalf of Islam, that they are unifying Muslims,

00:19:00.320 and that increases their popularity and credibility. The other area where the Turks have made conquests 0.94

00:19:07.840 is Cyprus. This is the Jeji Tkali airport, I want to say, in northern Cyprus. Cyprus is an interesting case,

00:19:17.840 and I'll explain why. The location of Cyprus here allows it to be a dominant player in the Middle East

00:19:27.440 if it is controlled by a great power, because Cyprus is an excellent base from which you can project

00:19:35.120 maritime and aerial influence towards Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and perhaps even the Suez and Egypt.

00:19:43.920 In 1974, Greece was ruled under a military dictatorship. Cyprus was unstable with communal conflict between

00:19:53.040 the Turkish-speaking Muslim population and the Greek-speaking Christian population. The Greeks

00:20:00.400 instigated a coup in Cyprus in the hope that this will result in unity between Greece and Cyprus,

00:20:10.080 and the Turks said, no, we don't accept this. So they used the coup and the existing communal violence

00:20:17.280 as a pretext, and they launched an invasion of Cyprus and captured the northern half and managed to divide

00:20:27.200 the capital, Nicosia, and take a chunk of it for themselves, as well as the northern third,

00:20:34.480 I would say, of the island of Cyprus. And the population was ethnically cleansed, the Greeks kicked 1.00

00:20:41.760 out the Muslims, and they all ended up in northern Cyprus. This followed the template of 1923. After the 1.00

00:20:51.920 end of the First World War, Greece and Turkey fought a war between each other. The result of that war was an

00:21:02.640 agreement, the Lausanne Treaty between Greece and Turkey by which Christians in Turkey, some of them

00:21:15.120 being ethnically Turkish, some of them being ethnically Greek, would get deported and sent off into Greece,

00:21:23.520 and the Muslims in Greece, some of them speaking Greek, some of them speaking Turkish, would be kicked 0.97

00:21:31.040 out and they would be sent to Turkey. And this was done by treaty. It was understood by the two sides

00:21:38.080 that look, a Christian population and a Muslim population cannot exist together in the same polity 1.00

00:21:44.800 under the modern rules that allow everybody a franchise and that allow everybody to participate

00:21:50.480 in government. Therefore, there needs to be a separation of the populations. The Greeks ended up in control 1.00

00:21:58.400 of all of the islands in the Aegean Sea, or pretty much most of the islands in the Aegean Sea. The Turks

00:22:07.520 ended up in control of Ionia and the mainland of Turkey. Cyprus was a unitary island, mostly governed by the

00:22:18.320 Greeks and the Greeks. And the result 40 years later was another 30 years later was another conflict in

00:22:25.600 50 years later. And the result in Cyprus 50 years later was another conflict that ended with the

00:22:32.240 partition of the island between the Muslims and the Christians. And this division persists to this day.

00:22:39.440 If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from The Lotus Eaters, head to our website where you can find more.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 21, 2025

PREVIEW： Realpolitik #5 ｜ The Geopolitics Of Turkey

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