The video explores the political and historical journey of Turkey, focusing on its evolving identity and its role as a bridge between the East and the West. It highlights Turkey's significant elections in 2023, which saw President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secure a third term in office, against expectations. Erdogan's tenure, starting in 2002, was initially seen as a blend of democracy, moderate Islam, capitalism, and positive relations with the West. However, Turkey is now criticized for declining political rights, increased suppression of journalists, and economic challenges like the devaluation of the Turkish lira.

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. euphoria [juːˈfɔːriə] - (noun) - A feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness. - Synonyms: (elation, happiness, joy)

Right after the end of the cold War, you had this sort of euphoria that we were all going to be functioning market economies and we were all going to be liberal democracies.

2. intelligentsia [ˌɪn.t̬ə.ləˈdʒen.siə] - (noun) - Intellectual or highly educated people as a group, especially when regarded as possessing culture and political influence. - Synonyms: (intellectuals, literati, scholars)

Kemal and the intelligentsia of the period, so called the Young Turks in the general term, they were very secular, scientifically oriented people.

3. strategic autonomy [strəˈtiːdʒɪk ɔːˈtɒnəmi] - (noun) - A policy strategy of a state to operate independently in certain aspects, especially in foreign affairs, to achieve its own long-term interests. - Synonyms: (independence, self-governance, self-reliance)

This foreign policy tilt away from the west has been labeled as strategic autonomy in turkish governing circles.

4. militant [ˈmɪl.ɪ.tənt] - (adjective) - Aggressively active, especially in the act of pursuing a cause. - Synonyms: (aggressive, activist, combative)

Since the 1980s, Ankara has battled insurgents from militant groups such as the Kurdistan Workers Party and the YPG, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in the Middle east.

5. strategic autonomy [strəˈtiːdʒɪk ɔːˈtɒnəmi] - (noun) - A policy strategy of a state to operate independently in certain aspects, especially in foreign affairs, to achieve its own long-term interests. - Synonyms: (independence, self-governance, self-reliance)

This foreign policy tilt away from the west has been labeled as strategic autonomy in turkish governing circles.

6. insurgents [ɪnˈsɜrdʒənts] - (noun) - People who are part of a rebellion against authority, often involving armed conflict. - Synonyms: (rebels, revolutionaries, guerillas)

Since the 1980s, Ankara has battled insurgents from militant groups such as the Kurdistan Workers Party and the YPG, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in the Middle east.

7. precipice [ˈprɛsɪpɪs] - (noun) - A very steep rock face or cliff, typically a tall one; metaphorically, it refers to a dangerous or critical situation. - Synonyms: (cliff, brink, edge)

Turkey's expansion towards Eurasia is not limited to Russia.

8. ultranationalist [ˌʌltrəˈnæʃənəlɪst] - (adjective) - Having extreme nationalist ideals, often with a belief in superiority over other nations. - Synonyms: (extreme nationalist, chauvinistic, jingoistic)

After nearly two decades in power, Turkeys ultranationalist and islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan defied expectations to secure a third term in office for the next five years.

9. partition [pɑːˈtɪʃən] - (verb / noun) - To divide (usually a region or territory) into parts; also a noun referring to the action or result of doing so. - Synonyms: (divide, separate, split)

It's a kind of a historical trauma, I think that goes all the way back to the Treaty of Sevres, which partitioned the ottoman empire among the european powers.

10. cementing [sɪˈmɛntɪŋ] - (verb) - To make a relationship or agreement stronger or more certain. - Synonyms: (solidifying, reinforcing, strengthening)

Both Greece and Turkey would then join NATO in 1952, formally cementing their place with the free world and the western fault.

Turkey at a crossroads - Will it turn to the East or West?

When this city was the capital of the Byzantine Empire. So when it was Constantinople, it was built as a church. But when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, they turned it to a mosque. When the secular republic was founded, the founding fathers wanted to make it a museum so that everyone can enjoy it. But then a few years ago, the Islamist government in Turkey converted it back to a mosque this time. So it's called the old lady of Istanbul. And it having a bit of an identity crisis.

For centuries, Turkey has straddled the east and west. In 2023, on the hundredth anniversary of its founding, the country held perhaps its most significant elections to date. After nearly two decades in power, Turkey's ultranationalist and Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan defied expectations to secure a third term in office for the next five years. In the early years of Erdogan's presidency, Turkey was hailed as a model country. The Turkish model was supposed to be a combination of democracy, moderate Islam, free market capitalism and good relations with the West, a blueprint for other Muslim majority countries.

Right after the end of the Cold War, you had this sort of euphoria that we were all going to be functioning market economies and we were all going to be liberal democracies. It was a very different world, this wonderful showpiece. Americans like that very much, and now they discovered it backwise. As of 2023, Turkey is rated not free by American nonprofit Freedom House as political rights and civil liberties deteriorated in the country. And for many years, Turkey has been one of the top jailers of journalists, a label it shares with China and Iran.

Since 2018, Turkish lira lost more than half of its value against the U.S. dollar. Ankara's warming ties with Russia have caused unease among some of its military allies. So how did it get here? Modern Turkey's borders were defined after the Ottoman Empire was defeated by the Allied forces at the end of World War One. The empire was subsequently divided among the victors. But a young military officer, Mustafa Kemal, led a successful uprising across the country. Turkey officially became a republic on October 29, 1923.

Kemal and the intelligentsia of the period, so called the Young Turks in the general term, they were very secular, scientifically oriented people. I remember my grandfather, they were very anti-religious. They believed in science, and that is typical turn of the century modernity. While in Istanbul, I visited Farouk Birthek, a sociologist and an emeritus professor at Boğaziçi University. The republic is really a clone of the Third Republic of France. That is what they aspire for. That's what they admired and that's what they wanted. To create here.

The ultimate goal was for Turkey to become a western country in terms of foreign policy orientation, but also in terms of its domestic setup, in terms of its lifestyle, everything. In 1947, the U.S. provided $400 million of military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece to contain the spread of communism. This marked the start of the Cold War, which led to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Both Greece and Turkey would then join NATO in 1952, formally cementing their place with the free world and the western fault.

Today, the Turkish armed forces is the second largest army in the military alliance, ranking above founding members like the UK or France. But in recent years, Turkey has warmed up to Russia, while western nations strive to isolate the Russian economy with record sanctions. Turkey doubled its trade to $68 billion in 2022, but its energy which has really bound the two countries together. Like many European countries before the war, Turkey is largely dependent on Russian natural gas, even though it has sought to decrease this with imports from Iran and Azerbaijan.

In 2020, Turkey and Russia formally launched TurkStream, the second major gas pipeline carrying natural gas to Europe through Turkey, bypassing Ukraine. And in March 2023, a month before the general elections in Turkey, the two countries launched a nuclear power plant built by Russia's state-owned energy company Rosatom. But Turkey's expansion towards Eurasia is not limited to Russia. In 2022, Erdogan attended a central Asian security blog hosted by China and expressed his desire for full membership.

This foreign policy tilt away from the west has been labeled as strategic autonomy in Turkish governing circles. I visited CETA in Istanbul, a think tank with very strong ties to the Erdogan government. strategic autonomy means having a different policy line in case where Turkey's middle and long-term interests are not compatible with the United States or NATO, so engaging with different actors in a more balanced way.

Since the 2010s, Turkey has expanded its military footprint across the Middle East and North Africa. Turkish armed forces have a presence in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan, among others. American withdrawal, I mean gradual withdrawal from the region brought a new security structure and new risks. Once Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE wanted to topple the regime in Qatar, Turkey's military position presence played a significant role in Libya. Again, the Tripoli government was tried to be toppled by Khalifa Haftar, and Turkey's military move was significant.

As United States is less interested to play the regional politics, I think Turkey again became an important actor. Stabilizing actors we have a situation where United States still is the most dominant actor in the international stage, but it has now serious and credible challengers, most notably of course, China, Russia is one of them, India is one of them. This creates a system in which these sort of mid-sized players or rising players, having more of a space to conduct partially independent foreign policies than, let's say, the United States.

Turkey's relations with the US have soured, particularly ever since the Obama administration decided to arm Kurdish rebel forces in Syria to fight the Islamic State in 2014. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey and there is a sizable population of Kurds in neighbouring Syria aiming to establish an independent state within or near Turkey's borders. Since the 1980s, Ankara has battled insurgents from militant groups such as the Kurdistan Workers Party and the YPG, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in the Middle East.

They have been supported, still being supported by U.S from France to a certain extent. Other European actors anti-western sentiment in Turkey increased significantly during the Erdogan era. But anxiety about western plots to undermine Turkey's unity is nothing new. In 1925, the young republic faced its first big challenge from the Kurds, demanding autonomy. At the time, Ankara blamed the UK for instigating the revolt and alleged that the British wanted to install a friendly, independent Kurdish state around Mosul, Iraq, which would give them access to the oil fields in the region.

A century later, similar worries continued to dominate Turkish foreign policy. Ankara also blames the US for harboring Fethulah Gulen, an ultra-religious Muslim cleric residing in the US. The Turkish government believes Gulen was the mastermind behind a failed coup against Erdogan in 2016. Traditional opinion in Turkey is that western powers expected Erdogan to be toppled by military coup, which didn't happen. A year after the coup, Erdogan signed a deal to buy S400 missiles from Russia, straining relations with the US even further.

Putin was the leader, which demonstrated stronger solidarity with Erdogan, which was also a turning point. United States or EU never demonstrated a similar kind of solidarity. In 2020, a survey on the public's perception of Turkey's foreign policy revealed that 70% of Turks believed the US posed a threat to Turkey. This was followed by Israel. Fellow NATO member Greece, which invaded Turkey in 1919, came in Tief. Around 50% also considered Russia, the UK and France to be threat too.

It's a kind of a historical trauma, I think that goes all the way back to the Treaty of Sevres, which partitioned the Ottoman empire among the European powers. That's why I think we have what some scholars call today the so called Sevres syndrome. The fear that the country will be partitioned and that this will be the hands of again western imperial powers. Behind me is TCG Anadolu, Turkey's largest naval ship. It carries helicopters and drones, and it's a potent symbol of Turkey's increasingly muscular foreign policy.

Just a few weeks before the 2023 elections, the warship was anchored in Istanbul for the public to see. In a bid to mobilize supporters, President Erdogan showcased the full might of Turkey's booming defense industry. It made sense during the Greek war, of course, you had to mobilize people to fight the invasion, but we don't have any war anymore. In 2021, Turkey's defence sector reached a turnover of $10 billion, while arms exports hit $4.4 billion in 2022.

Prize military drones manufactured by a company belonging to Erdogan's son-in-law are both a domestic and foreign policy tool. Turkey tried to diversify its economic ties, cultural ties. So it's a multifaceted foreign policy. It's not just military, but at the same time, Turkish entrepreneurs tried to go to these African countries, Balkan countries, Middle Eastern countries.

You think Turkey's western allies were intimidated by this? Yes. Especially France, for instance. Africa. They have been intimidated. They consider Turkey's new role in these areas as a challenge or as a competition, the need for the government to attain regime security and to use foreign policy as an instrument, as a tool to keep that regime security. Of course, if you have that in mind, as an ultimate goal, it becomes a much more short term policy game where you do sudden twists and turns, where you do change as alliances from one day to the next. So this goes a little bit further than just an independent foreign policy from the West.

Politics, Turkey, Global, Geopolitics, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Cnbc International