[remarkEon]

>Turkey is the (almost literal) culture gate between Europe and the Middle East, this is in itself very valuable.

If this were true why do ME refugees not want to stay there?

>Largest army in Europe.

Okay, but if they're more culturally similar to the ME, as your first point implies, than to e.g. Germany doesn't it become a little problematic for employing this army in NATO's current theater of operations?

>Erdogan still has to restrain himself because he has treaties with NATO allies...

This is a great argument for why entangling alliances with people who aren't really your friends or are too culturally distant to even pretend as much are a terrible, awful idea. I believe we fought a World War because of this once.

[soganess]

They do, Turkey took in a share of Syrian refugees and really that can't be underplayed.

But to answer your question, Erdogan not the coolest dude ever. Plus Turkey doesn't have the greatest history of human rights especially if you aren't Turkic in ethnicity. Just ask the Armenians, Greeks and Kurds(very much related to this issue). All of which happened in the last 100 years.

In short, if you are getting displaced why not go the extra distance? Just because you've been violently displaced from your home (and everything you know) doesn't mean you can't have upward mobility ::eyeroll::.

[sahinabi]

>If this were true why do ME refugees not want to stay there?

In Europe, west of it, they could earn much more. They don't want to go Romania either for example.

[ohduran]

> This is a great argument for why entangling alliances with people who aren't really your friends or are too culturally distant to even pretend as much are a terrible, awful idea. I believe we fought a World War because of this once.

People tend to forget that. Thanks for articulating it so well.