Turkey began 2023 as it ended 2022 – threatening war to “defeat every enemy”. In a video, which you may find more amusing than the Defence Ministry in Ankara intended, a series of beyond macho military types rap from inside the cockpit of an F-16, the control room of a warship, and during various derring-do infantry escapades.
Leaving to one side the comical effect of the video, its tone re-enforces the increasingly bellicose rhetoric the Turkish government used in 2022 to threaten Greece. Some analysts suggest the language used last year is unprecedented in its hostility. That is likely to continue in 2023, not least because this is the centenary of Ataturk’s founding of the Turkish Republic from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, and also election year in both countries.
