Turkey’s ambitions have imperial echoes

Facing the challenge of a domestic economic crisis, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes that successful military interventions in the surrounding region will foster nationalist solidarity

President Erdogan, always a tough talker, is now acting tough. He has despatched troops and military hardware to northern Iraq, Syria and Libya, as the Ankara government asserts what it regards as its legitimate rights in the broad Eastern Mediterranean. For too long, he argues, neighbouring states have ridden roughshod over Turkey’s interests. Now he is saying enough is enough. “The actors that are planning to violate our rights and interests should be ready to pay the price we already have been paying,” he told an audience in Ankara in July. Turkey’s campaigns against Kurdish separatists in the east of the country and their bases in northern Iraq, and its involvement in the war in Syria, a