"It's Common Sense": Our Turkish-American Moment
We can trust our Turkish allies and we should aspire to being closer.
She’s got the second largest Army in NATO and the thirteenth in the world, with an estimated strength of 775,000 military and paramilitary personnel in 2022.
Her Navy patrols the Black Sea and guarantees Ukrainian wheat to a global market. Her world class drone company just signed a contract to produce UAVs for Ukraine. Look closely and you can imagine its CEO — the president’s son-in-law — as a future leader. There are shades of the Blues brothers here. We all know that the industrious Turks will rebuild Ukraine just as it once did with Germany.
Once upon a time Türkiye wanted to join the European Union. But who cares about such silly things after Brexit and Nordstream 2’s demise. Europe is a museum and maybe a mausoleum. Does it even exist anymore? We dare not ask that question but we dare not ignore it. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu — who Erdogan bested in the recent elections — was awfully European wasn’t he? It didn’t work.
Ours is an age of empires, newly discovered. Empires allow a charismatic vision that the best can make their own. They exist first in the mind and the heart. Türkiye is an empire whose language and people stretch across Asia. Her charms attract the glam of Central Asia as I saw and heard walking along the Aegean last summer in Bodrum.
Like all empires she has her problems. Türkiye lacks oil. That, too, can be solved. A railroad through Armenia to Turkish ally Azerbaijan is more possible now that Armenia’s ally Russia is weakened.
But Türkiye may not need oil after all. Last year I saw scores of solar panels and wind farms along the Aegean coast. With the right submersibles off the coast mapping the coastline Türkiye could be energy self-sufficient.
With a bit of pluck and a little imagination you can imagine an Aptera factory in sunny Türkiye cranking out cars powering the future.
Türkiye is one of only six countries to be agriculturally self-sustaining and there’s quite a lot American farmers, particularly in California, could learn. Türkiye uses drip irrigation technology whereas California’s farmers largely don’t. With the drying up of the Colorado River California should take lessons—and fast. That is if private equity hasn’t already sold the fresh produce farms out to China.
Were I running Türkiye I would be aggressive in international markets when it comes to food.
On the higher end I’d do everything I could to get as much industrial production going in Turkey whose quality and flexibility is peerless.
Like Vietnam who the Financial Times says “economic moment has arrives,” Türkiye is the better boyfriend than China when it comes to global trade, especially as China’s always lost costs turns out to be nothing more than a trap.
Türkiye could, if it wanted to, raise up agricultural standards to get higher prices. Perhaps such higher standards could even be used to break up Big Food in America if an enterprising politician could be summoned to make the case.
Its citizens could also have greater access to U.S. technology deals if a partnership could be struck. It’s “common sense,” as I told one of my Turkish friends on a stroll through the National Portrait Gallery. He took this photo of me.
"At its core, the intelligence profession is about human interactions, and there is no substitute for direct contact to deepen ties with our closest allies, communicate with our fiercest adversaries — and cultivate everyone in between,” Director William Burns of CIA recently said.
What goes for intelligence goes equally for investing. I am already an investor in a Turkish entrepreneur who is not just a business associate but a friend. We spent Fourth of July together.
I intend to do much more with my newfound Turkish friends. There’s talk of special purpose vehicles and giving Turks access to early stage tech. We discuss what ways Turkey could be a part of the American discourse.
But most of all, I listen and observe.
Let’s build the future together. Get in touch. I have ideas.
Yours is a young country. It’s a country that still does big things. It’s a country that has a future. America should be a part of it.