Turkey!

I've written blogs about Paraguay and about Haiti. We must consider our policy toward Turkey. Turkey was a loyal NATO ally of the United States from approx. 1945, through the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, through the collapse of the Soviet Union, and up to the present day. The Turks (Young Turks and Old Turks) want to be a part of something bigger. They have been trying to get into the Euro Zone and the European Economic Community, but they keep getting turned down. Shoud the United States pursue closer ties with Turkey? Turks aren't strictly Arabs. They used to have their own empire--the Ottoman Empire, which they lost in 1918 at the end of World War I. They have been proven to be a formidable ally and good fighters on the same side of the U.S.A. in the Korean war, and pulling guard duty, throughout the Cold War, along the common border they had with the Soviet Union who wisely decided to leave the Turks alone. Turkey has great strategic value. Napoleon once commented that whoever controls present day Turkey can control a large part of the world. Certainly, Russia would try to be friendly with whoever controls their warships' ingress and egress with the Mediterranean. What should our policy be toward our NATO ally Turkey--unwanted in the European Economic Community and not popular among the Arabs and Islamists either? For Biblical scholars, Smyrna (modern Izmir), and many of the other places frequented by the Apostle Paul are in present day Turkey. Turkey, a former part of the Roman Empire, has a rich history. I'm not advocating a particular policy, and I'd like to see what our readers think about the Turkish question, "What should we do with Turkey?"