Turkey has two vocations as explained by its history and its European and Asian territory. Double soul represented in the sultanate and the republic. Once the sultan settled in Istanbul, the Constantinople of Roman Byzantium, with its conquest in 1453 (the end date of the Middle Ages), he began his European vocation, halted in 1683 with his defeat in the Second Siege of Vienna. Since then he has turned to the Middle East and North Africa; his Muslim soul. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Turkish territorial presence in Europe was only limited to Istanbul and its surroundings.
In the First World War, defeated the Ottoman Empire and reduced to its current territory, Turkey, it seems to opt for Europe with the Republic of Ataturk and its secularism. Later in the century, with its desire to join the European Union, its European soul seems to triumph.
But Erdogan and his moderate Muslim party? they discover the Asian soul or, rather, the Middle East and opt for it. Between Greco-Roman Byzantium and deep Muslim Anatolia, he chooses the latter. He prefers the presidential Sultanate to the parliamentary Republic; Asian autocracy to European democracy. And he has achieved it, although the results of the Referendum have left a nation divided almost equally.
Perhaps Europe is better served by an Asian Turkey that pacifies the Middle East, as is a post-Soviet Russia capable of managing Central Asia. The issue is how Europe articulates an intelligent foreign policy; able to have both as friends without coming into conflict with them, nor directly supporting their autocratic drifts.
They are two “brands” (territory of borders) with the mission of pacifying problems that originate beyond their territories. Historical mission that the First World War ruined and mission that interests us Europeans if we are convinced that geopolitics has its laws. Laws that history teaches and take revenge when we forget them.
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