Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Before the Oil Age, as I've suggested, Turkey advanced into the Balkans and Europe in
order to develop the economic capacity so that it could also advance into the Middle East.
In the Oil Age, it is the other way around. As Turkey becomes a European conduit for Irani-
an and Caspian Sea oil, it becomes too important an economic factor for Europe to ignore.
Rather than be merely a land bridge, albeit the largest land bridge on the globe, Turkey—a
G-20 country—has become a core region in and of itself, which, along with Iran, has the
capacity to neutralize the Arab Fertile Crescent, whose societies are beset by internal up-
heaval caused by decades of sterile national security regimes.
Furthermore, the move by Turkey and Brazil to safeguard Iran's enriched uranium was
more than a rogue action of little practical consequence to help fundamentalist Iran acquire
a nuclear bomb. It reflected the rise of middle-level powers around the world, as more and
more millions from developing countries joined the middle class.
The silver lining for the West is the following: without the ascent of Turkey, revolution-
ary Iran becomes the dominant power in the Middle East; but with Turkey's aggressive rise
as a Middle Eastern power for the first time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Iran
will have competition from next door—for Turkey can at once be Iran's friend and compet-
itor. And don't forget, Turkey still belongs to NATO, and it still has relations with Israel,
however frayed. As difficult as it has become for the West to tolerate, Turkey's Islamist
leadership still represents a vast improvement over the mind-set of the Iranian clerical gov-
ernment. Turkey can still act as a mediator between Israel and Muslim countries, just as
Iran holds the potential yet to modify its own politics, either through political upheaval or
through the wages of the regime's own longevity and contradictions. What is clear is that as
the Cold War fades from memory, both Turkey and Iran will have their geographies further
unleashed in order to play intensified roles in the Arab Middle East. Turkey is no longer
yoked so strongly to NATO, even as NATO is a weak reed of its former self. And with the
end of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq—itself a vestige of Cold War, Soviet-style po-
lice states—Iran is enmeshed in the politics of the Arab world as never before. It is all quite
subtle: Turkey works in concert with Iran even as it balances against it. At the same time,
Iraq emerges as a predominantly Shiite alternative to Iran, however weak Iraq may be at
the moment. Assisting Turkey and Iran has been the revolution in global communications
that, at least in their cases, allows people to rise above ethnicity and truly embrace religion
as an identity group. Thus, Turks, Iranians, and Arabs are all Muslims, and all are united
against Israel and to some extent against the West. And so with the enhanced geographical
factors of Turkey and Iran affecting the Arab world, the vast quadrilateral of the Middle
East is more organically interconnected than ever before.
Unlike the cases of Turkey and Iran, the Arab countries that lie between the Mediterranean
Sea and the Iranian plateau had little meaning before the twentieth century. Palestine, Le-
