Turkish Election Results and Implication

[Montmorency]

Demographic claims are worth your scrutiny, but there's more to say. According to the World Bank figures for 2015, Turkey's fertility rate is 2.05 per woman, Russia's 1.75. (noteworthily Iran's was 1.68, an outcome of post-Khomeini government policies.) Meanwhile, gross population growth in Russia 2016 (as well as the US and China, maybe we could use some more immigrants?) was well below 1%, compared to the Turkish rate of 1.6%, around which it has hovered for decades (actual figure for Russia was 0.2%).

Without going much deeper, we can at least conclude that while Russia's demographic condition has improved since the post-Soviet period, and Turkey is at the replacement rate, Turkey's population size and growth is at least stable. The age distribuion in Turkey is weighted toward the youth, in Russia toward the middle-aged. I'm sure there is much more to dive into here on the subject of demographics. For example, the potential impact of refugees and Arabs in Turkey, or that of Central Asian guest workers in Russia.

Quickly revisiting Iran, it seems their fertility rate is surging again, now that family planning policies have changed to be pro-birth. The Iranian experience tells us that governments can wield a great deal of influence over fertility rates in either direction. Just something we should keep in mind; it may not tell us much (yet) about what these rates could look like for any given country in the future.

Geopolitically, the orientation and drive is there for Turkish expansion: Autocratization, Western alienation, rise of global fascism; Afrin, oil and commerce in Kurdish Iraq, Rojava...

Speaking of, @Crandar what do you think of the Rojava experiment?

Russia has no less oportunities for territorial expansion. It can move where there is a sizable Russian-speaking population - Ukraine, Belorus - and to the Central Asian steppes (Kazakhstan).

The same is true about Russia.

Leaving aside Ukraine, the small Caucasian and Central Asian countries around Russia are either friendly to its interests, or else easily pushed around with threats or economic sticks and carrots. The Georgia war is a teaching moment. Turkey, meanwhile, has poorer relations and territorial claims with just about all of its neighbors, as well as non-state threats. Knowing that, we can move on to identifying the two countries interests, desires, and constraints. The relevance to Western interests, desires, and constraints. Russia the revisionist state, or Turkey the rogue state?

And I'm more interested in the realistic manifestation of drift in policy and on the ground, not the extreme one. Like, Russia reconquering the Soviet Union or Turkey invading Greece on the way to Warsaw (with Syrian Arab Janissaries at the vanguard!).