While Americans were eating turkey for dinner, Turkey the country was on the move. And the first domino to fall was the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Aristotle is credited with coining the phrase, “Horror vacui” — literally the horror of vacuums — but it’s commonly translated in English as “nature abhors a vacuum.”
Whether or not that’s actually true in physics, it’s absolutely, 100% true in global politics: the moment a vacuum appears, there’s a madcap race to fill it. The only questions are who, when, and how fast.
In the 1980s, the greater Middle East was balanced between Iran and Iraq. With their large populations and vast petro-resources, they were fully capable of unleashing all kinds of havoc on their neighbors — and so they did.
But after the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqis rolled into Kuwait and marched their armies towards the Saudi border, poised to claim the lion’s share of the Middle East’s oil. President George H. W. Bush built a worldwide coalition that neutered Saddam Hussein’s army; this, coupled with crippling sanctions — followed by the second Iraq War in 2003 — removed Iraq from contention as a regional superpower.
Then, for a little while, Iran was the ascending power. With Saddam worm food, the Iranians were free to manipulate the Shias in Iraq to serve as a client state. And when President Obama reoriented American foreign policy towards Iranian rapprochement, the wily Mullahs were able to exploit American naivety to extract billions of untraceable dollars.
Which they promptly used to fund terrorist militias around Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and more.
President Obama tried to talk tough on Syria. He rattled the saber and warned of a “red line” that the Syrians better not cross. (Or else!) And then, when they promptly crossed it, Obama puffed his chest and gestured wildly, but ultimately did nothing.
Meanwhile, Iran forged an alliance with Russia to prop up the Assad regime in Syria — conditioned, of course, on Assad giving Russia and Iran a free hand to run roughshod over Syrian territory: building militias, funding terrorist groups, and murdering Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Without Iranian and Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war, Assad’s head would already be on a pike. He let them in because he had no choice.
But the last few years haven’t been good for the Persians or Rooskies.
Russia badly miscalculated the extent of the Ukrainian resistance, and has been bogged down in a resource-depleting border war. It’s “all hands on deck,” and time is running out.
They no longer have the bandwidth to lead the charge in Syria.
An Iranian miscalculation led to their regional demise, too. After Hamas murdered, dismembered, raped, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians, the Israelis went from being on the back of their heels to being on the warpath. Hamas has now been destroyed. Hezbollah was quickly decapitated (and beeper sales still haven’t recovered). Their terrorist proxies have all been defanged.
And now, with President Trump about to return to power, the Iranian economy is reeling in anticipation: they know the international marketplace is about to get very hostile. Iranian currency has already dropped to a record low. They’re running out of money.
Sorry, mullahs: you can’t fund international terrorism when you’re broke.
This has given Turkey a generational opportunity to emerge as the new regional superpower of the greater Middle East. With 85 million people, the Turks have the size, strength, and military hardware to be the most dominant force for decades.
A Turkish foothold in Syria would be a helluva first step.
What this means for Israel is unclear. Turkey is a NATO country and has ties to the West, but it’s also a Muslim-majority nation. Their current president (and/or dictator), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has sought to define himself as a steadfast opponent of Zionism and supporter of the Palestinians. While it’s largely suspected that Erdoğan fans the flames of antisemitism for domestic purposes, it would be a mistake to discount darker, more disturbing motives.
Sometimes, the guy who acts like a vicious, Jew-hating antisemite really is a vicious, Jew-hating antisemite!
Either way, ever since the end of the George W. Bush years, the United States has been withdrawing from the Middle East. Neither political party has the appetite for another desert adventure. Besides, with the shale revolution, we’re no longer dependent on Middle East oil, anyway.
Israel will need to find another regional ally. Today it’s Saudi Arabia; tomorrow, it very well could be Turkey.
It won’t be easy. Any Israeli-Turkish rapprochement would have multiple moving parts and/or PR obstacles, but each nation scratches the itch of the other: Turkey has the manpower and influence to help protect Israel, and Israel has the hi-tech infrastructure, Western ties, and specialized military to help Turkey grow its regional influence.
Something to keep our eyes on long-term, because it looks as if the first domino just fell in Aleppo.
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