If Turkey left NATO, what would be the immediate effects?
The real question is “is NATO a necessary organization at this age?” Or “was it ever necessary” from the Turkish point of view. Imagine this: Turkey was never a member of NATO and the USSR decided to invade Turkey sometime in the early Fifties (or the Sixties or the Seventies or even the Eighties). Would the western powers permit this because there was no alliance between Turkey and the West? Of course not, the consequences would be dire. As a result of joining NATO we had to keep an armed force which was way too powerful against anybody but the USSR and certainly too weak to fight the USSR. (Turkey was and still is the second most numerous NATO armed force after the US). We became 100% dependant to NATO countries for armemants and our economy never flourished because of the immense defense budgets. Just as it was not beneficial for Turkey to join the alliance then it is not really necessary to stay in now. Turkish armed forces are more then a match to any threat from a non super...