You'll want to read Roger Cohen's "Turkey Steps Out." Here's my reply that (I hope) will be approved and posted at the site:
I understand the rage of Armenians and Kurds...my great-grandmother, a Maronite Christian, starved to death in the final years of the Ottoman Empire (along with many Muslim neighbors, I'll add, as food to the cities ran out). But the suffering of those past and present cannot alter the realpolitick of the region.
The West needs Turkey, and the question is, does Turkey need us? I hope so. The talks of further amendments to Turkey's constitution terrify me. The last thing the West--or Armenians in the diaspora or Kurds in the East--need would be an Islamic Republic with Sharia law on Europe's eastern borders. In my trips to Istanbul and Anakara, I've wondered at the frenetic and vibrant night life there. The young people who benefit most from the 7% growth of the economy party, even as they attended universities gated to protect them from kidnapping. But I imagine their counterparts did in Tehran in the 70s. Meanwhile, other young people of modest means listen to the call of the muezzins.
The triple game played by Syria, Iran, and Turkey should also matter more than what has been discussed in many of the comments here. Iraq is likely to collapse into civil war not long after the last US forces leave. How could that disaster end otherwise?
I could see Syria occupying the Sunni triangle in the west, with its probable oil reserves, Iran "stabilizing" the Basra region to gain access to its oil, and Turkey cowing the north into something like Finland during the Cold War. Those Kurds might shut down the PKK havens in exchange for a sweet deal of autonomy and pipeline access to the Mediterranean for all the oil in the north of Iraq.
The only question in that scenario would be how the Saudis, not the West, would respond.
Welcome to the new normal in a Post-American world.
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