Quote Originally Posted by Ray View Post
Your theory on Turkey being the centre of gravity does not gel.
A kitten died.

Connector between Arab world, Persians, CIS

Are they threats to the West?
Surprise: Geostrategy is about influence, not only about threats.
Best answer to hostiles in a distant region is to stay away from them.

Iran is closer to CIS from the CAR and Afghanistan
So what? Turkey is a neighbour of Iran just like Afghanistan.

Controls Bosporus

What is important to the West? Bosporus or Hormuz? Hormuz controls 60% of the world's oil movement.
Maybe, but Turkey controls Bosporus, Afghanistan isn't even close to a maritime bottleneck at all.

Turkey: score +1, AFG score +0.

If CIS is in Afghanistan it is closer since Russia has good ties with Iran. What stops Russia using Iranian ports if Russia adopts a confrontationist stance with the West, having developed Afghanistan as a sphere of influence?
Nothing, a few isolated soldiers and diplomats would have no influence whatsoever on Russia using Iranian ports. Russian brain cells would, though. Russia has nothing to gain whatsoever from such a move and its ports are freakishly far away from Iranian Persian Gulf ports and half the Russian navy would break down before it reached any of those.

In strike range of Suez Canal.

What is its relevance to the world - the real world in the East?
Oh, wow. First it was "Old Europe and New Europe, now the whole West is unimportant?
Hint: Afghanistan is in strike range of nothing of relevance at all. Again score +1 Turkey, nothing AFG.

Political connector between orient and occident and not fully joined with any bloc.

An ancient mindset that hovers around the West as the centre of the world!!
Hardly, it's rather a description of the shism between two cultural regions. This shism has been fortified by separate economic development and the description is still useful to describe that the two regions are different.
Turkey is relevant to both - especially politically, but also as the only halfway realistic in-between country.

Still a NATO member and thus able to veto all major NATO actions.


NATO is an irrelevance that is being tolerated. It has lost its meaning after the Cold War. They can't even agree to disagree.
It's not a readily available and willing pool of slavish auxiliary army troops that Americans want it to be, but it's extremely important as a security guarantee for dozens of countries and pacifying a historically extremely warlike continent.
A member like Turkey has great influence on whether NATO stays such a stabiliser or whether it becomes a military adventure club.

In fact, you argued involuntarily for Turkey's importance, for Turkey is part of the reason why NATO didn't agree so easily recently. Again Turkey score +1, Afghanistan +0.

Good infrastructure (harbours, roads and rail lines that can actually support a major force - unlike Afghanistan).

Are you aware of the development being undertaken?
Yeah, show me the military air bases, the huge civilian and government stocks of fuel and food, show me the civilian communication infrastructure, show me the modern ports, show me the two-way rail lines.
Istanbul has by itself more relevant infrastructure than all of Afghanistan.
Turkey +1, AFG +0.001.