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Turkey has the second biggest army in NATO and relevant geography for anything involving Russia or the Middle East.
Isn't this just 20th century thinking?
Their human capital sucks. Israel would destroy Turkey in a war despite a much smaller population and inferior geography. The world has moved on from the era of the Dreadnought. Today's it's all about raw materials, supply chains, and microchips. Turkey is a dinosaur whose poorly trained troops would only be cannon fodder in a conflict which involved the U.S.
Turkey produces their own F-16s under license-build, they export drones, they build satellites and they're even working on their own fifth-gen fighter like South Korea.
Turkey isn't Iraq, Syria or Egypt totally reliant on whatever they can import, they build things. Turkey actually managed to beat back France and Britain and escape a planned partition after WW1, they don't just instantly lose whenever Europeans show up like Arabs. They export manufactured goods: televisions and vehicles. They're 8th in steel production worldwide.
Israel has never fought any first or even second-rate militaries like Turkey, they've never fought any serious industrial powers at all and would be reliant upon nukes (in the admittedly ridiculous scenario where the US wasn't bailing them out).
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Even if that is all true (and given Turkey's population size, I don't think it is; quantity has a quality all of its own), it's far better for them to be cannon fodder FOR the US than cannon fodder for the other side.
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