Turkey-West Relations

"Turkey's strategic geopolitical positioning as a bridge between Europe, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and South Caucasus, and its religious, cultural, and historical affiliations with countries in its immediate neighborhood, make it an indispensable actor in European and transatlantic security. In the early 1950s, Turkey was so eager to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that it fought in the Korean War and incurred heavy casualties. Subsequently, it has traditionally been well embedded in Western security infrastructures"--