Turkey’s quest for Strategic Autonomy

Implicit to the concept is the need for Turkey to dominate the Mediterranean in order to reclaim the mercantile and maritime power once held by the Ottomans. [...] By controlling the sea routes from the Black Sea and the Suez Canal to the Central Mediterranean, Turkey would control the major eastern transit routes to Europe and become the undisputable trans-regional power. [...] The retreat of US strategic conflict, fomenting attention from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East – going back to the “Asia instability in the pivot” under the Obama administration – was viewed by Turkey's President Erdoğan as region while also an opportunity to fill the power vacuum8. [...] The interdependent, but their presence of one country’s surrogate forces “legitimized” the presence of the other’s, interdependence is perpetuating the presence of foreign militants in the country and keeping Libya asymmetrical in unstable. [...] In Mali, the political and religious inroads made by Turkey, combined with the deployment of the Russian Wagner Group, are contributing to the sidelining of the French and EU presence35.