Sweden and Finland set to join NATO in May

[The Mikado]

Turkey has a very impressive military and a deep historic rivalry with Russia going back over 300 years and being basically constantly true. That said, Erdogan's "play both sides against the middle/appeal to Turkic roots in Azerbaijan and Central Asia to create a Turkish bloc" foreign policy is going to conflict with the rest of NATO regularly.

Turkey's a big boy and doesn't really need the United States or NATO to protect it. I said nearly a year ago here Turkish military could take the Russians already and that's way truer than it ever was. Turkey isn't a charity case like some rich NATO countries that don't want a real military because the US will take care of them, Turkey can and does defend itself quite effectively. That said, if they want to prevent Sweden from joining over bulls**t PKK harboring reasons (hopefully they'd still let Finland in?) and want to help Russia avoid sanctions etc, I think that NATO should look for other options after a certain point. Turkey's goals are just not the same goals as the rest of NATO.

Turkey would be fine without NATO. Maybe even more than fine. Turkey is a rising power, not a falling power like most of the main Western European NATO partners. And NATO would be more than fine without Turkey. I don't even think there'd need to be intense bitterness about it, but if the AKP wins Turkey's next election, saying "bon voyage, good luck with having Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan replace us as your main partners" is totally fair and merited.