The Americans, alarmed at the new cold war between Turkey and Israel, two of its allies, are working to bring them together again. The United States wants a better relationship between them so as to strengthen NATO’s position in the eastern Mediterranean. In NATO terms, Turkey is a key country because it controls the entrance to and exit from the Black Sea through the narrow gap of the Bosporus Strait. If it closes the strait, which is less than a mile across at its narrowest point, the Russian Black Sea Fleet cannot break out into the Mediterranean and then the Atlantic. Even getting through
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