Turkey’s neighbors include Iran, Iraq, Syria, Greece, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Armenia. This is a rough neighborhood, which is pretty important to all kinds of events going on in the world today. Fortunately, Turkey is in NATO, a military alliance formed after WWII that includes much of Western Europe, the United States and Canada.
When describing Turkish troops in the Korean War, my father said that they made the most impressive allies: loyal, fearless, with strong bounds of esprit de corps. Let’s hope that the geopolitical changes of the past ten years still have Turkey on our side. Recent speeches by Turkey’s president are vague on this issue.
As I was waiting in the passport check line, I heard an announcement over the speakers announcing that a Turkish Airways flight from Tehran, Iran had just arrived. The group of tourists in front of me in line were from Turkmenistan, which is I suppose the ancient homeland of the Turkish people before their migrations westward about 1000 years ago.
Even so, my first impressions of this city is its European-ness.
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