The only thing I will add to this since I agree to most of it is that extremists including certain governments want this conflict to exist.
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]atypical1 wrote:
Turkey has also been a great friend in that region and has typically supported us. I’ve trained with their military and they were very professional and seemed to like Americans pretty well. The general public also seemed very friendly but this was a handful of years ago and my visit was only for a month so it might not have been a great sample. I’m not sure why we tend to ignore Turkey and their usefulness to us as a powerful ally in that region.
[/quote]
I looked through your posts and you are operating under the misunderstanding about Turkey’s recent hostility to the USA is caused by Israel.
This is false. In fact, Turkey, and, more particularly, the Ottoman Empire (with some noteable exceptions) was, on balance, a good friend of Israel, and, in fact, one of the major proponents of recent (by which I mean, post 1800) Zionism.
It actually dates back to the early 1800s, when the area of the middle east where Israel is was part of the Ottoman Empire. Back then, Israel was basically empty land, but for Jerusalem, which was held down by Hasidic Jews (who never left) and various Orthodox/Catholic sects holding down the various Christian shrines. (The mosque on the Temple Mount was more-or-less in dis-repair and unuses – it was not considered significant in Islam until the 1960s, and then for political, not religious, reasons.)
Anyways, the Ottoman Empire actively courted Jewish settlors and sold the land that is now Israel to various Zionist groups, with the idea being a Jewish state within the greater Ottoman Empire.
Idea was the land was empty, not making any money, and the Jewish immigrants would bring life to a useless part of the empire.
Various wars intervened (esp. WWI) and these plans fell apart together with the Empire.
Anyways, Turkey remained relatively friendly, with active trade and military co-operation until the last couple of years. I trained with Turkish soldiers, for example. Israel sold lots of weapons (missles, drones, improvements to their F16s, etc)to Turkey.
What happened to make Turkey hostile is misguided pressure by the USA (esp. George Bush II) and the EU for democractic reforms in Turkey. The Turkish military and ruling parties warned that Islamists would take over.
Well, the EU and USA ignored the advice of the Turkish military, et al, and the Islamists are taking over, just like they did in Iran in 1976 and Eqypt in 2012 and everywhere else this stupidity is tried.
Well, the Islamist are hostile to the USA because the USA is Western. They are hostile to Israel because the Quran says to kill and butcher Jews, and they are fundamentalist who take the Quran literally.
Has nothing to do with Israel, except we refuse to die.[/quote]