Turkey, Israel, and American hegemony

Turkey’s strategic location has served as a land barrier for many of its allies, wrote Dankwart Rustow. 1 During the Cold War, Turkey blocked the path of Soviet expansion into the Middle East. It was in large measure thanks to the existence and effectiveness of the Turkish barrier that Soviet successes in Arab countries, though often great, were always precarious, leaving the rulers of those countries the option of reducing or even eliminating Soviet influence if they so chose. Several Middle Eastern governments which at various times flirted with the Soviet Union (SU), and some of which acted as hosts to Soviet troops, were able to terminate that relationship at will, precisely because they were protected from direct Soviet intervention by the land barrier of what was once known as ‘the Northern Tier.’