The Military Strategic Rationale of Turkey’s T-Loramids Project and the Eurosam Offer

Recherches & Documents (Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique) n° 01/2014

Can Kasapoglu *

Throughout Turkish military history, the nation’s strategic depth has been evaluated as a key asset of defense. Within this military thought, conventional capabilities have always been seen as crucial in creating a tangible difference between the geopolitical norms of “front” and “behind the frontlines”.

However, in the recent decades, drastic shifts in Turkey’s regional threat landscape with regard to strategic weapons proliferation, namely ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), have gradually altered the Turkish geopolitical reality. Clearly, while striking critical national infrastructure and attacking high-value targets in the nation’s geopolitical core around Istanbul would have been nearly impossible for a Middle Eastern adversary in the past, at present, a scenario considering WMD – tipped ballistic missile salvos could theoretically change the entire calculus. In fact, the current Middle Eastern defense trends suggest that the regional military balance tends to split into the two extremes of the “warfare scale”, namely, low intensity conflicts on one hand, and strategic weapon systems on the other.

* Dr. Can Kasapoglu is a research fellow at the Istanbul – based, independent think-tank EDAM , and a faculty member at the Girne American University .

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