this video was made possible by nebula use the link down in the description below to support real life floor directly by signing up where you can watch 28 additional and exclusive full-length videos in my ongoing nebula modern conflict series covering recent major Wars and crises including this video's next part covering the entire history of the decades-long conflict between turkey and its millions of Kurdish inhabitants NATO is a nominally defensive military Alliance of 31 member states today as of 2023 founded primarily against Soviet and currently Russian expansionism in Europe and yet one of NATO's member states consistently carries out foreign policy actions contrary to the consensus aims and policies of all the other member states turkey to an outside and as yet uninformed viewer turkey's actions over the past decade have made it seem more like a rogue state whose very status within NATO has been frequently put into question turkey's president recently re-elected to another five-year term in 2023. reshipt erdogan has carried out a highly confrontational and aggressive foreign policy against nearly all of his neighbors ever since the 2010s including against several fellow member states he has repeatedly threatened war with neighboring Greece as recently as December 2022 when he publicly boasted of turkey's ability to strike the Greek Capital with ballistic missiles or two months before that in October when during a rally he warned the Greeks that quote we may suddenly come one night suggesting a potential future Invasion he has repeatedly waged actual war in Syria with three separate invasions in 2016-2018 and 2019 that have all resulted in about five percent of Syria's internationally recognized territory falling under Turkish military occupation with frequent threats to launch even further invisions to expand that control even further at the expense of the Syrian Kurds were supported armed and supplied by the United States he recently in 2023 ordered the shutdown of the critical kirkuk sehan crude oil pipeline a pipeline that usually carries oil from the autonomous Kurdish Regional government or krg in Northern Iraq to the Turkish part of sehan for export to the World Market and which provides roughly 80 percent of the entire krg's operating budget meaning that without it the krg is staring down Financial will ruin and potentially even collapse with severe consequences for the always fragile internal stability within a rock he has delivered weapons and supplies to assist his ally Azerbaijan wage war against Armenia while continuing to officially deny the charge of the 1915-1917 Armenian Genocide something that most of the other member states of NATO do recognize as being a Turkish state-sponsored Genocide including the United States erdogan has sort of taken both sides during the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine on the one hand selling Turkish produced arms to Ukraine helping to negotiate a deal that for a Time enabled Ukraine to continue exporting its globally significant grains to the World Market and blocking additional Russian warships from being able to pass through the Turkish Straits into the Black Sea theater but on the other hand he has continued leading turkey into purchasing tens of billions of dollars worth of Russian oil natural gas and coal since the invasion began while continuing to allow millions of Russian tourists to visit the country granting Russians the ability to start up companies invest and buy property in Turkey all while refusing to participate in any of the West's Financial sanctions against Russia while also further blocking the Turkish Straits to any outside NATO warships from entering into the Black Sea theater as well the last American warship to have even been present in the Black Sea left nearly two years ago now back in December of 2021 as a result he had previously LED turkey into purchasing the russian-built S 400 anti-air system for billions of dollars in 2019 and 2021 A system that was specifically engineered by the Russians to Target and shoot down the American-made F-16 and F-35 stealth fighter and which resulted in American sanctions coming down on its NATO Ally turkey's ejection from the F-35 program and the Biden administration's ultimate decision to recognize the Armenian genocide in 2021 in retaliation turkey further dispatched its own troops to fight overseas in the Libyan Civil War in 2019 and 2020 on the opposing side of its other NATO allies France and Greece while Turkish warships have come into scuffles with the French and Greek navies all across the Eastern Mediterranean while Turkish and Greek fighter pilots have engaged in dogfights over the Aegean Sea with several pilots on both sides losing their lives turkey even further continues to militarily occupy 37 percent of the island of Cyprus an EU member State and the only part of du jour European Union territory currently under de facto foreign military occupation and all of this has been in addition to erdogan's Long hold up of allowing neither Finland or Sweden to join NATO after they applied following Russia's invasion of Ukraine Finland has since been allowed to join but as of the production of this video turkey still is not officially ratified their acceptance of Sweden to join none of these actions make it seem like turkey is a normal member of the NATO alliance or that turkey is even friendly to the West at all and that's because turkey isn't pro-western or even pro-nato nor is turkey Pro Russian or pro-ukrainian turkey is simply pro-turkey and sees itself as a completely independent and separate actor and in order to understand the very complicated game of geopolitical chess that turkey is currently playing across its region in order to anticipate what Turkey's next moves might end up being you have to go back to where the modern Republic of Turkey came from in the first place out of the ash of the previous Ottoman Empire learn why it joined NATO in the first place and why the circumstances since then have radically changed leading to turkey's current foreign policy and behaviors and president erdogan's great project to reshape 21st century turkey into the great power that he and many other Turks believe the nation should rightfully be once again you see prior to the first world war the Turkish Ottoman Empire was a vast Imperial State spanning across dozens of different ethnicities languages and religions and United under the rule of an absolute hereditary monarchy where the state's legitimacy came from its simultaneous claims of being the natural heir to the ancient Roman Empire and the successor to the previous Islamic caliphates that all came before it reinforced by its control over all three of Islam's holiest cities giving it the authority to claim itself as the spiritual leader of the Islamic faith but for centuries leading up to 1914 the empire was in a slow but constant stated decay in Geographic Retreat finally culminating in its decision to join the sen Central Powers of World War One which had ultimately lost and which ultimately resulted in the Empire's final destruction in 1920 the Victorious Allied Powers presented the Ottomans with the terms of the Treaty of savres all of the Empire's remaining Arab lands were to be torn off from it including all of the Islamic holy cities of Mecca Medina and Jerusalem a huge new independent state for the Empire's Armenian people was to be created in the Northeast while another independent state for the Empire's Kurdish people was to be created in the Southeast the British who had annexed the island of Cyprus from the Ottomans in 1914 at the onset of the war would retain their control virtually all of the many thousands of islands within the Aegean would be given to either Italy or Greece well the Greeks would further Annex most of the Ottomans remaining territory in Europe in addition to another exclave in Anatolia around the city of Smyrna and since that would place the Greeks in control of the northern side of the Dardanelle Strait in the sea of marmara The Straits themselves leading between the black energy and seas was to be placed under an internationally governed Administration beyond the sovereignty of turkey that remained the turkey that remained under the terms of res was doomed to be nothing but an insignificant rump State left only with a rugged mountainous and difficult to develop lands of some of Anatolia and only about half of the rich sea of marmara and core of the Turkish civilization and so understandably outraged that the treaty's harsh terms the Turks decided to massively rebel against them and so began essentially the continuation of the first world war for the Turks fighting off the Greeks French British and Armenians trying to enforce the Treatise of Reza's terms for another four years until 1923 to put it succinctly there is a very large degree of historic enmity between the Greeks and the Turks going back at least a thousand years back when the Turks first began migrating into Anatolia from Central Asia eventually culminating with the ottoman Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the Turkish occupation of all of Greece for nearly 400 years until Greek Independence was finally only achieved again in 1829 after which a popular idea in Greek nationalist circles and foreign policy began appearing called the magali idea the idea that Greece should restore the historic Byzantine Empire and take over all all of the lands across Europe Anatolia and Cyprus that still had large ethnically Greek populations at the 1919 Paris peace conference at the end of World War One this was literally the map presented by the Greek delegation outlining all of their territorial Ambitions at the expense of the Ottomans roughly lining up with the territory of the reformed Byzantine Empire as it had been more than six centuries previously and while the Allies didn't give them everything they wished for out of the Treatise of Reza 1920. they still gave them a lot of it and so the Greek armed forces and tens of thousands of their troops into Eastern Thrace and around Smyrna to try and enforce their claims in the end though the Turks fought hard and emerged victorious in the ensuing war against Greece and the Allies forcing everyone back to the negotiating table again with the newly drafted Treaty of lausanne in 1923 which led directly shortly afterwards to the proclamation of the modern Republic of Turkey a new turkey built not on the concepts of Empire absolute monarchy and the spiritual leader of Sunni Islam like its ottoman predecessor but upon the new foundations of secularism westernization and the European model of a republic in a nation-state for the Turkish people but in order to accomplish all of that the new turkey also set about on a campaign of radical self-transformation that sought to turkify whatever remained of the country's territory which involved either removing or assimilating anyone left behind who wasn't deemed to be Turkish enough these kinds of transformative policies and actions led to the events that befell the Armenian people remaining in Anatolia between 1915 and 1917. in which the Christian Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire was systematically and methodically destroyed resulting in an estimated one and a half million Armenian deaths the issue of whether or not to this event legally constitutes a genocide or not is one of the most controversial contemporary issues between turkey and the outside world because turkey's official state position ever since right up into the present day explicitly denies that a genocide ever took place a position that is only similarly held by turkey's allies Azerbaijan in Pakistan conversely the very first country in the world to recognize the events as a genocide of the Armenian people was Uruguay in 1965. a total of 34 countries around around the world as of 2023 officially recognized the Armenian Genocide including most of turkey's own allies in NATO but the Armenians weren't the only ethnic minority in the lands that became turkey that were purged in the early 20th century after the Greeks were treated in 1922 and modern turkey's borders were established in 1923. the two governments agreed on a population transfer of their Christian subjects considered to be Greek and their Muslim subjects considered to be Turkish one and a half million Greek Orthodox Christians were kicked out of turkey and sent to Greece while 400 000 Turkish Muslims were kicked out of Greece and sent to Turkey an event that continues to influence greco-turkish relations today a century later after that transfer and the massacres before it the only significant ethnic minority remaining within the Republic of Turkey after it was established were the Kurds across the southeast of the country a people whose lands spanned across the newly created countries of turkey Syria Iraq and also Iran for decades afterwards the Turkish government would carry out a policy of attempted assimilation of its own Kurdish population including at various times outlawing the Kurdish language and culture itself and denying that their separate ethnicity existed altogether by officially categorizing and referring to them as so-called Mountain Turks or Eastern Turks well into the 1990s and while geographically speaking the terms of lausanne were much better for turkey than severez had been it still forced turkey to compromise on many issues nonetheless many ethnic Turkish Brethren remained outside of turkey's borders and hate in the French mandate and then Cyprus still ruled by the UK while virtually all of the Aegean Islands remain controlled by either Greece or Italy and the Turkish Straits themselves still remained under an international Administration Beyond turkey's own sovereignty all the turkey was left with for the most part was the barren arid mountainous rugged in difficult to develop Anatolian Peninsula and far more importantly turkey's Rich historical core around the Sea of marmara which for thousands of years has been one of the greatest Geographic cores for any civilization to build itself around the Sea of marmara surrounded by a series of low-lying planes in both Europe and Asia and there is an abundant amount of fresh water nearby which makes it one of the most agriculturally productive regions in the entire world while the internal body of water within marmara itself is a very large calm and easily navigable body of water that makes transport and trade across the marmara region incredibly easy and makes marmara function as essentially more of a single colossal natural Harbor bracketed by the narrow choke points of the Bosphorus in the North in the Dardanelles in the South through which Goods produced anywhere around marmara can be easily and rapidly transported by sea out to Oceans all around the world and moreover this agriculturally rich and easy to transport through area is also smack in the middle of some of the most lucrative trade routes that the world has ever known and that has historically made them armor a region one of the epicenters of global trade Commerce and finance this is because the Bosphorus marmara and the Dardanelles make it the only possibly navigable route by sea from anywhere around the black Seas Coastline out to the world ocean a geographic fact that is even further Amplified by many of Europe's largest rivers that empty into the Black Sea as well like the Danube the dinyapper and the Dawn all of the commercial centers factories and Farms established along any of these Rivers within the interior of Europe or anywhere around the Black Sea Coast have never had any other option of exporting their goods out to the World Market by sea other than funneling them all through the marmara region well historically the easiest land-based trade route between South Asia and Europe also funneled through marmara this all made the marmara region the most important Crossroads of the world for trade for thousands of years and brought whomever controlled it the ability to generate fabulous wealth through taxing that trade and exploiting the Region's immense agricultural potential still to this day in 2023 the marmara region is the core of modern day turkey and the most important piece of real estate that the country controls it is presently home to more than 27 million people nearly a third of the entire Turkish population and nearly tripled the entire population of Greece marmara alone accounts for a whopping 75 of the entire modern Turkish GDP while the Turks who live there have a GDP per capita of nearly 72 thousand dollars seven and a half times higher than the Turkish Nationwide average and higher than the Nationwide averages of every country in Europe other than Iceland Switzerland Norway Ireland and Luxembourg so obviously any civilization in control of a geographic Jewel as valuable as marmara naturally wants to defend it by projecting its Frontiers away from it as far as physically possible to more naturally defensible Terrain in order to block any hostile outside powers from being able to penetrate into the marmara core the best territorial strategy to defend marmara involves possessing a strong Navy capable of guarding and plugging the Bosphorus and Dardanelles the lead into marmara while projecting power into both the black and Aegean Seas on either end it also involves expanding the most desired land borders away from armor all the way across Anatolia to the southeast because while Anatolia may not be very useful from a civilizational development standpoint it is very useful as a huge difficult to travel over barrier separating the valuable core of marmara from everyone else over in the Middle East into the Northwest anyone who controls marmara will most ideally want to expand their borders around influence at least up to the best Arabian Gap and the iron gates the best Arabian Gap is the narrow flat chunk of planes in between the Black Sea and the East and the Carpathian Mountains in the west across which to the north exists the vast and seemingly endless great Eurasian step that expands all the way to Mongolia in order to defend against any threats to marmara that may emerge from that direction control or at least influence over the best Arabian Gap is Paramount meanwhile the iron gates are the extremely narrow but traversable Gorge the the Danube River carves between the Carpathian Mountains in the North and the Balkan Mountains in the South creating a narrow passageway through the mountains towards marmara from the pannonian Basin in Central Europe with control over these land choke points in Europe Naval Supremacy in the black and Aegean seas and control over the whole of Anatolia the core of Turkish civilization is safe but unfortunately for the Turks by 1923 they had lost all of that except for their control over Anatolia and even that was being threatened by sporadic Kurdish rebellions in the southeast of it thus ever since the Treaty of lausanne was first signed there has been a constant Cadre of Turkish nationalists who have still railed against its terms as unfair and turkey has generally spent this Century of History ever since pushing back against it in all different directions whenever it senses that it has the geopolitical opportunity to do so the first significant pushback came in 1936 when sensing the growing geopolitical angst in Europe over fascist Italy's control over many of the Aegean Islands the Turks were able to successfully renegotiate their ownership over the Turkish Straits with the Western powers in the 1936 Montreal Convention which continues to remain legally enforced to this day and essentially guarantees that the Straits will remain open to all commercial activity of all Nations during times of Peace while during times of War turkey can largely act as it sees fit and deny the passage of outside warships through as it is currently doing during the war in Ukraine then a bit further on in 1937 the Turks were also able to convince the French who controlled Syria at the time to push out the hete province as an Indian dependent State and then in 1939 following a highly controversial referendum within the independent country of atay it voted to be annexed into turkey which finally created turkey's contemporary internationally recognized borders but it has remained a highly sensitive issue harming relations between turkey and Syria ever since Syria has continually claimed ever since their own independence from France in 1946 that hate was stolen from them by the Turks as a result of French colonialism and that it should be rightfully returned back to Syria a position that the Syrian government still officially maintains as of 2023. after the horrible experience during World War One in which I lost its entire Empire turkey opted To Tread carefully for a while and remained neutral throughout the entire second world war until the final closing days of it in 1945 when an Allied victory was all that certain but afterwards at the beginning of the Cold War turkey's geopolitical situation became quite possibly the most tenuous it has ever been at any point during the past Century all of Italy's Aegean Islands were seeded over to Greece in 1947 but the British still ruled over Cyprus but most alarmingly of all the Soviets now dominated essentially the entire rim of the Black Sea Beyond turkey's own control and through its Warsaw Pact proxies also dominated both the best Arabian Gap and the iron gates and feeling emboldened after their triumph over Germany and preparing for the cold war with the United States Stalin was now insisting on tearing up the terms of the 1936 Montreal Convention that he argued was enabling turkey and potentially America to bottle up the Soviet Black Sea Fleet now all of a sudden in 1946 Stalin was demanding that turkey agreed to a new joint Turkish Soviet administration of The Straits with a permanent Soviet military presence getting established there alongside of the Turks to replace the Montreal Convention after turkey refused to entertain the idea the crisis escalated even further and the Soviets then began pressing the Turks for a series of territorial demands in Far Eastern Turkey based on the soviet's historic claims of the previous Russian Empire and then additionally on behalf of the claims of the Georgian and Armenian Soviet republics based on the land that the World War One era allies had promised to give Armenia during the 1920 Treaty of of res and then to attempt to destabilize turkey even further the Soviets also began covertly supporting and influencing several Kurdish separatist groups operating across the southeast of turkey contributing to the later pkk Kurdish separatist group adopting a staunchly Marxist leninist ideology understandably alarmed by all of this and fearful of the Soviet Union as a majorly looming existential threat turkey decided to join the NATO alliance in 1952 alongside their Arch historic rival Greece for very similar reasons because although they shared a deep historic enmity and maintained multiple ongoing territorial disputes both turkey and Greece back at the time were far more fearful of the Soviet Union as their shared greater external threat and to Nato turkey was considered an invaluable Geographic asset with its control over the Turkish Straits being able to contain the Soviet Fleet within the Black Sea and its proximity to the Soviet Union's Southern flank granting the United States the ability to establish an Air Force Base at incirlik from which it could launch spy planes and also Park nuclear weapons to launch quickly during the event of full-scale nuclear war meanwhile Cyprus was finally granted independence by the British in 1960. although a couple major British military bases remained lasting up to this day granting the UK military close proximity to intervene in potential flashpoints across the Middle East but by the 1970s the leader of the freshly independent Cyprus was perceived in Washington as growing too close to the Soviets who are actively searching for additional ports in the Mediterranean to complement their lease over Tardis in Syria and so alarmed by that in 1974 the United States supported a coup on the island that was orchestrated by what at the time was the right-wing military Junta ruling in Greece a coup that was deliberately intended by the regime in Greece at the time to result in the unification of Cyprus with Greece the concept that was referred to in Greek as a gnosis or Union at the time approximately 77 percent of cyprus's population were Greeks who were broadly in favor of unification with the Greek mainland but another 18 of the Island's population were Turks who most definitely were not in favor a legacy of the centuries who control the Ottomans had once enjoyed over Cyprus before it passed into rule fearing that their Coastline in the Mediterranean would be even further Boxed In by Greece where Cyprus to be annexed and citing their right to protect the ethnic Turks of the island turkey decided to launch a full-scale maritime invasion of Cyprus shortly after the coup took place in 1974. the result was that turkey militarily occupied about 37 percent of the Island's territory before a ceasefire between both sides was finally agreed upon which led to an indefinite de facto partition of Cyprus along a United Nations patrolled buffer zone known as the green line that continues to remain in force today around 150 000 Greeks on the island or about a third of cyprus's Greek population at the time were then forcibly removed from the north of the island and pushed to the South while another sixty thousand Turks on the island or about half of cyprus's Turkish population then were forcibly displaced from the south and pushed up to the north representing in effect the most recent population transfer between the Turks and the Greeks today in 2023 cyprus's population is sharply divided with 99 of the population in the South being Greek and 99 of the population in the north being Turkish nearly a decade after its Invasion and occupation in 1983 the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was unilaterally proclaimed as a new independent country out of the turkish-occupied area in the north of the island though to this date the only country in the world that has ever recognized its legitimacy and sovereignty is turkey the UN continues to consider Northern Cyprus an illegally turkish-occupied territory of the Republic of Cyprus which is further amounted to an illegal military occupation of EU territory after Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004. since the 1970s around 150 000 Turks from the Turkish Mainland have also migrated to Northern Cyprus as well which the UN further considers to be an illegal migration of occupied territory but for the first time in more than half a century turkey had pushed back against the terms of lausanne with military force and was largely successful in doing so it had re-established a firm de facto foothold in Cyprus once again but by 1982 the stakes in the territorial disagreements between Greece and Turkey over the terms of lausanne had only in Korea East it was in that year that the United Nations formulated the UN convention on the law of the sea a set of legal Frameworks for all marine and Maritime activities worldwide than most of the countries of the world have since signed on to this is the convention that established International laws defining a country's territorial Waters as extending up to 12 nautical miles from their Coastline and exclusive economic zones or eezs extending up to 200 nautical miles from their Coastline from turkey's perspective though this agreement became especially worrisome within the Aegean Sea between themselves and Greece prior to the 1982 U.N convention it was customary that a state's territorial Waters in which it exerted exclusive sovereignty extended out to only six nautical miles from their coastlines which was what both Greece and Turkey were practicing within the Aegean but although the Greek and Turkish mainlands around the Aegean are roughly equal in length the overwhelming majority of all the thousands of islands within the sea are all controlled by Greece and were set up that way by the terms in the 1923 Treaty of lausanne were Greece and Turkey each to extend their territorial Waters in The Aegean up to the 12 nautical miles as prescribed by the 1982 U.N convention Greece's numerous Islands nearby to the Turkish Coast would block the Turks from receiving any benefit at all while virtually the entirety of the Aegean would suddenly transform into Sovereign Greek territorial Waters essentially making the Aegean a Greek Lake from the perspective of turkey which remember when you're primarily concerned about the defense of your core region around marmara is not necessarily very ideal thus Greece signed on to the 1982 U.N convention on the law of the sea while turkey to this date never has and so insists that it is not legally Bound by it turkey further insists that despite Greece having signed the treaty the previous territorial Waters limit of six nautical miles has to remain in force within the Aegean in 1995 the Turkish Parliament even adopted a resolution that were Greece ever to unilaterally extend its territorial Waters in The Aegean up to the 12 nautical miles without turkey's consent it would be considered a Casas ballet and turkey would consider going to war with Greece over the issue turkey further began insisting that Islands cannot be entitled to having a full 200 nautical mile eez and should be limited only to their 12 or 6 nautical mile territorial Waters while the proper 200 nautical mile eezs of countries should only be measured from their Continental land masses or Continental shelves turkey is the only country in the entire world that maintains this unique interpretation of international maritime law but they do so because it would so clearly benefit them at Greece and cyprus's expense in the Aegean in the Eastern Mediterranean turkey's interpretation of maritime law in the eezs would ignore all of Greece's islands and divide the Aegean Sea in half along the median line in between the Turkish and Greek Continental mainlands equally dividing the Eugene between a Greek Yeezy and the West in a Turkish eec in the East but to Athens such an outcome would leave many of their Eastern Islands as exclaves completely separated from the rest of Greek territory and Waters and troublingly surrounded by Turkish Waters including majorly populated Greek Islands like Rhodes Lesbos and chios which can lead them vulnerable to her further incorporation into turkey moreover turkey's interpretation of maritime law would restrict the ability for even very major islands like Creed and Cyprus to generate eez as well granting the Turks a much more expanded easy deep into the Eastern Mediterranean and severely clashing with the UN recognized Maritime claims of both Greece and Cyprus in 1990s and 2000s this issue mattered a lot but it would matter a whole hell of a lot more later on in the 2010s once massive amounts of natural gas reserve started getting discovered in these Waters which we'll get back to later on first in 1991 something extremely geopolitically significant happened that presented turkey with a massive change in Circumstance the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact suddenly collapsed and with it the newly independencies emerged a Bulgaria Romania Moldova Ukraine Russia Georgia Armenia and Azerbaijan turkey immediately seized the opportunity and became the very first country in the world to recognize the independence of Azerbaijan in November of 1991 and the two have developed a sort of special relationship ever since then with the Turks viewing the Azerbaijan as their close ethnic turkic Brethren and the two remaining staunch geopolitical allies ever since at about the same time though the Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm in 1991 bring serious alarm bells in turkey's Southern Direction the Kurds of Northern Iraq had long been harshly repressed by the regime of Saddam Hussein but after saddam's crushing defeat against the U.S led Coalition in 1991. the U.S Air Force established a no-fly zone across the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq that prevented the Iraqi Air Force from ever returning to Menace though which enabled the Iraqi herds to gain effective autonomy from the government in Baghdad and established the Kurdish Regional government or krg the following year in 1992. representing the first part of the Kurdish inhabited area of the Middle East spanning across Iraq turkey Syria and Iran to actually achieve autonomy which greatly alarmed the government of turkey who is actively fighting against its own full-blown Kurdish Insurgency at the time being waged by the gorillas of the leninist Kurdistan Workers Party or pkk across the whole Southeast of Turkey were their own Kurdish population mostly lived turkey's only saving grace here was its geopolitical influence over the krg in the shape of the kirkuk seihan crude oil pipeline the lifeline of the krg's economy that granted them the only option they had to export their oil resources out to the World Market through the Turkish Port of sehad that had been previously constructed back across the 1980s oil exports almost entirely through that single pipeline to say hand would make up roughly 80 percent of the entire krg's economy and so without the pipeline without turkey's cooperation the krg economy would almost immediately collapse which gave turkey a very high degree of influence within the krg to the extent that the krg even granted the Turkish Armed Forces permission to launch cross-border raids into their territory targeting fellow Kurdish pkk training camps and bases in the 1990s turkey was still very pro-western as it had generally been ever since it first joined NATO back in 1952. Russia was still covertly supporting the pkk Rebellion across Southeastern turkey while turkey began counter supporting the Chechen Rebellion that was happening within Russia fight back turkey still saw its future aligned with the west and spent most of its diplomatic efforts throughout the 1990s and early 2000s trying to join the European Union where the Customs Union agreement reached in 1996 and even EU candidacy status achieved at the tail end of 1999 but from then on the negotiations between Ankara and Brussels over turkey's admission to the club began stalling over a number of issues turkey's human rights record was widely regarded as not being up to EU standards with wide-scale reports of war crimes and abuses combating the ongoing pkk Insurgency in the southeast of turkey and the ongoing state-sponsored Kurdish assimilation program to the continued illegal occupation of Northern Cyprus which after 2004 became an illegal occupation of EU territory to the continued State denial of the Armenian Genocide to turkey's ongoing Maritime disputes with Greece and threats of War many people in the EU were hesitant about what turkey's membership for the group would mean and moreover turkey didn't mean many of the economic requirements to join as well and there was still a certain degree of prejudice Within Europe that the Turks were simply not European enough to join it eventually became quite clear that turkey would never be accepted into the European Union and seeing the door to the West behind them slowly closing the Turks started naturally looking in other directions and for new leadership culminating with the first election of Russia erdogan and his AKP party to the Prime Minister position in 2003 and by that point in the 2000s turkey's ancient power as the geographic Crossroads of the world was starting to amplify once again the shattering of the Soviet Empire in 1991 left wide open the vast oil and gas riches around the Caspian Sea to Western investment and development for the very first time and turkey immediately understood its Geographic significance in between the raw oil and gas resources around the Caspian and the energy-hungry European market over time a major crude oil pipeline called the Baku tibilisi sehad or BTC would be constructed to carry massive quantities of azerbaijani crude oil to the Turkish Port of sehan where it would link up with previously constructed Kirk Cook's sehan crude oil pipeline that carried oil from northern Iraq's oil fields into sehan as well all of which would then be exported from seihan on tankers out to the global market over a period of many years and at a cost of more than 35 billion dollars a Consortium of Western energy companies and the azerbaijani and Turkish governments also pain stay healing constructed the South caucuses pipeline the trans Anatolian Pipeline and the trans Adriatic pipeline in a massive project known as the southern gas Corridor which transports vast volumes of azerbaijani natural gas directly to the European Union via turkey which now all on its own provides roughly 3 percent of the eu's entire natural gas supply moreover Russia's oil and gas pipeline Network constructed all throughout the Soviet era to the European market all ran entirely through Ukraine and now Ukraine was a freshly independent country who wasn't getting along very well with the Russians on a whole host of issues that encouraged the Russians to begin a decades-long process of building out new pipe line routes that circumvented around Ukraine and two of those new pipelines the Russians built went beneath the Black Sea to Turkey and then from Turkey onwards to Europe blue stream and later Turk stream which carries on Russian gas further towards Bulgaria Hungary and Serbia even the Iranians got into the business of pipeline construction across turkey with the completion of the Tabriz and Cara natural gas pipeline in 1996 which carries Iranian gas directly into turkey and then to add on to all the oil and gas pipelines that began crisscrossing turkey the Turkish Straits were also rapidly becoming a major export and import route for Seabourn crude oil in 2000 Western energy companies discovered the largest oil field found anywhere in the world at any time in the past 30 years a supergiant field known as cash again Within kazakhstan's part of the Caspian Sea by the time commercial production finally began out of cash again in 2012. more than 116 billion dollars had been invested into developing it including the construction of the Caspian pipeline Consortium towards the Russian port of Nova races on the Black Sea where it is further met by many of Russia's own oil pipelines along with the northern route export pipeline from Azerbaijan and so consequently nearly all of kazakhstan's oil exports and a significant amount of Russia's in azerbaijan's oil exports all flow through these pipelines towards Novo races where they then get loaded up on a tankers after which they have to pass through the Turkish trades in marmara on their way out towards the global market reinforcing marmara as a critical choke point for the global oil industry and especially the Russian and Kazakh oil industries that is estimated about three percent of the entire Global Supply of oil passes through the Arion tankers every single year so ultimately while turkey itself had hardly discovered any oil or gas reserves of their own and was an overwhelming net energy importer with 93 percent of its oil supply and about a hundred percent of its gas supply coming in from abroad its geography nonetheless ensured it power and influence anyway as the prime Crossroads between the European market and the oil and gas resource locate stations in Northern Iraq Iran the Caspian Sea and Russia turkey's economic importance and influence was growing once again and so too were turkey's Ambitions just at the same time as their door to the European Union was closing shut beginning in 2010 the Arab Spring revolutions opened up another opportunity for turkey to focus its power projection to the South into the former lands of the Ottoman Middle East with tumultuous revolutions and Civil Wars erupting in Syria Iraq Egypt and Libya it was a great opportunity to influence events in their favor but unfortunately for the Turks and for erdogan they nearly always kept backing the losing side and just about every single instance in Egypt for example erdogan enthusiastically supported the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and their candidate Muhammad Morsi to the presidency in 2012. following the overthrow of the longtime Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak the year previously in 2011. the Muslim Brotherhood is a pan Sunni islamist and anti-monarchist organization who seeks to establish the unification of the entire Muslim World beneath a single caliphate level Authority practicing Islamic Sharia law which greatly appealed to erdogan's in the akp's own pan-islamist beliefs and philosophies to an extent erdogan since the 2010s has been both a pan-islamist with a strong conviction in his Sunni faith and a Turkish nationalist with a strong conviction in turkey's ultimate Destiny to lead the Muslim World once again as he used to during the Ottoman period so when the Muslim Brotherhood emerged in power in Egypt in 2012 erdogan sought as the opportunity to strike an alliance with Egypt with himself in Turkey as the more senior partner but unfortunately for him the Muslim Brotherhood is also anathema to the regimes of the era monarchies of Saudi Arabia the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain who all officially regarded the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization over the brotherhood's opposition to their own monarchies Saudi Arabia in particular was utterly terrified about the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood government emerging in Egypt over concerns of what that government could or would do with the Suez Canal they could potentially shut it down to Saudi the oil tankers and block off the most major export route for Saudi crude oil to Europe and so in 2013 the Saudis sponsored a coup in Egypt that overthrew the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government and replaced it with a rule by the Egyptian Military led by Abdel fatal CC who after taking power promptly purged the Muslim Brotherhood from the country outlawed it and also recognized it as a terrorist organization leading to very tense relationships between itself and the governments of Saudi Arabia the UAE and Bahrain and erdogan's government in Turkey they began offering the Brotherhood a safe Refuge to regroup in then as Libya descended into a catastrophic Civil War in 2014 turkey gradually came to support the government of national accord or GNA side based in Tripoli in another part of the formerly ottoman world the GNA had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and of course erdogan wanted to establish more brotherhood-friendly regimes in the region but the biggest thing that the GNA in Libya provided erdogan was an astonishing Maritime agreement with him that came about in 2019. wherein the g a government essentially recognized all of turkey's Maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean and accepted turkey's unique interpretation of maritime law the first other government in the world to ever do so and in order to legitimize and enforce Libya's acceptance of the Turkish claims turkey decided to dispatch its own troops overseas to Libya to fight in the Civil War on the gna's behalf to ensure that the GNA would end up emerging Victorious and keep the deal intact but this once again placed Turkish forces fighting in the formerly ottoman World against the Arab Coalition against it that was opposed to the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood and further Turkish meddling in the Arab world el-sis Egypt completely opposed to the establishment of a Muslim Brotherhood influence state right next door to him in Libya backed up the opposing side in the civil war against the GNA and the Turks as did Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates along with the Assad regime in Syria Greece Cyprus France and Russia and the reason why the Turks were pushing so hard for the GNA in the Civil War and the recognition of turkey's Maritime claims where because of a series of effort mentioned discoveries that had been made earlier on in the 2010s you see for a very long time the Eastern Mediterranean was regarded as a geologically dead sea from an oil and gas perspective it was simply thought that there wasn't anything of commercial value to be found there but then all of a sudden in 2009 a discovery happened within the Israeli easy that changed that line of thinking forever an American Energy company named Noble discovered a large natural gas field that they called Tamar only about 50 miles off of the Israeli coast and then the following year in 2010 came one of the biggest energy discoveries of the entire 21st century only 47 kilometers further to the southwest of Tamar the appropriately named Leviathan natural gas field one of the largest gas finds of the entire 21st century so far which contained enough gas within it to sustain a hundred percent of Israel's entire demand for decades to come the discoveries completely revolutionized Israel's energy security profile and Israeli production from the Leviathan field finally began in 2019 suddenly trans forming Israel into not only being completely self-sufficient with natural gas but a major potential gas exporter as well Noble further went on to discover the major Aphrodite gas field within the eez of Cyprus in 2011. in which Chevron and shell currently expect production to begin in 2027 while the Italian Energy company any further discovered the major zor gas field within the eez of Egypt in 2012 Paving the way for all three countries Israel Cyprus and Egypt to each become significant new gas exporting countries to Europe and sitting on the sidelines of all of these new Fantastic natural gas discoveries was Turkey who also knew how the 1982 U.N convention in the law of the Seas rules largely blocked off their own Easy in the Eastern Mediterranean and made it Boxed In by the eez's the U.N granted to the islands of Greece and Cyprus turkey was fearful of missing out on any of the potentially huge gas discoveries that were suddenly being made and so they began much more aggressively asserting their own Maritime claims contrary to the U.N recognized claims of Greece and Cyprus in the 2010s shortly after signing the maritime agreement with the GNA in 2019 erdogan publicly railed against what he called the absurdity of castillarizo a tiny Greek island within swimming distance of the Turkish Mainland with fewer than 600 Greek inhabitants and more than 125 kilometers away from the nearest other Greek land mass but which under the U.N convention on the law of the sea generates this massive eez roughly 4 000 times larger than itself for Greece deep into the Eastern Mediterranean at the expense of turkey erdogan Lem bastit the Casta loriso didn't deserve an eez at all and the following month in January of 2020 even rejected the notion that Crete deserved an easy a major Greek island with over 600 thousand residents Turkish drill ships escorted by Turkish warships then began entering into all of the various overlapping Maritime claim areas between themselves Greece and Cyprus and they began searching for more natural gas fields and with the Turkish government very firmly insisted were their Waters including locations very close to Major Greek Islands like Crete and Rhodes which have led to frequent disputes and confrontations with the Navies of Greece and Cyprus as well as the French navy who even sent an aircraft carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean to support the United Nations backed claims of Greece and Cyprus the French even signed an unprecedented Mutual defense pact with the Greeks in 2021 promising that if Greece ever came under Turkish attack France would be contractually obligated to join the war and come to Greece's aid but turkey's plays here in the late 2010s were also designed to disrupt a plan by the West to begin circumventing their geographic location as the new Crossroads of the global oil and gas trade around 2019 there began serious discussions between Israel Cyprus and Greece to construct a brand new pipeline that would be called eastmed that would connect all of their newly discovered Eastern Mediterranean gas Fields directly to the European Union currently projected to be completed by 2025 at a price tag of 6 billion euros the pipeline will greatly help the economies of Israel and Cyprus by turning them into major natural gas exporters who will suddenly be capable of supplying the European Union with roughly three percent of their entire natural gas supply once it's all operational and it will all simultaneously diversify Europe's gas Imports even further away from Russia and completely circumvent turkey's Crossroads location with all of its other pipelines naturally meaning that both Moscow and Ankara are opposed to the project and part of the reason why the Turks so aggressively pursued the maritime deal with the GNA in Libya because it directly put Turkish and Libyan Maritime claims in the way of the proposed eastmed pipeline which the Turkish government began insisting afterwards was illegal to construct since it would have to cross through their Waters there was even an event in 2019 where Turkish ship was bringing weapons to the GNA in Libya and a French frigate operating in the area nearby attempting to Halt the delivery claimed that the Turks momentarily locked their weapon systems onto them this is a very a very high stakes game currently being played for natural gas resources across the Eastern Mediterranean between turkey and the g a and Libya on one side with their claims pushing back against the United Nations the 1923 Treaty of lausanne and the status quo and Greece Cyprus Israel Egypt and France along with probably the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia all pushing back against them on the other side Wars have erupted between nations over far smaller issues than this in the past and these are the modern 21st century issues that have led erdogan to frequently boast about Turkish missiles being capable of striking Athens in the event of a conflict eventually erupting between turkey and Greece over their Maritime disputes in a one-on-one fight turkey possesses very clear and significant advantages in overall population the amount of manpower to pull from and numbers of tanks and artillery pieces giving turkey an overall clear advantage over Greece on the land but the advantages turkey enjoys diminished substantially when it comes to the air in the sea Greece has invested very heavily into its air and sea defenses both in order to project power into the Aegean in the Eastern Mediterranean and to dissuade turkey from ever launching an attack challenging its Maritime boundaries and as a result the Turks and Greeks alike have largely comparable numbers of Fighters and most of them on both sides are Advanced American-made f-16s the two sides have roughly comparable numbers of frigates and submarines as well with an overall slight advantage to turkey with a superior number of helicopters and a single light aircraft carrier that can transport helicopters and drones to relevant theaters of combat turkey does however possess its own increasingly Advanced domestic arms industry that produces the highly sought after bayritar tb2 which has seen wide scale success in the Turkish Armed Forces against the pkk and the ypg in Syria and within the azerbaijani Armed Forces against Armenia and within the Ukrainian Armed Forces against Russia conversely Greece doesn't have any comparable domestic arms industry and no comparable drone Arsenal it is not exactly clear how NATO would respond to a conflict like this erupting between two NATO member states within the alliance but something that Greece certainly has over turkey is more powerful friends to call upon like France who is now as of 2021 obliged by treaty outside of NATO to go to war with turkey on Greece's behalf in the event of a Turkish attack on Greece and as a result it is far from clear that turkey would win right now in a conflict with Greece and or Cyprus overpressing their Maritime claims in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean and so it has incentives to be pushy but still diplomatic in the future however turkey's demographics are certain to completely swallow Greece's whole because right now there are roughly 13 times as many Turkish children aged 0 to 14 then there are great children age 0-14 and turkey's fertility rate remains substantially ahead of greeces 20 years from now in the 2040s it is all but a mathematical and demographic certainty the turkey's young fighting age and working age populations will be orders of magnitude greater than the equivalent populations Greece and there's very little grease can actually do about that other than hope to stay within the good graces of outside powers and potential protectors like France or the United States but regardless tensions between the two sides finally started to cool down a bit in the 2020s after the Turks also began discovering some of their own massive natural gas fields in the Black Sea within their Northern eez in 2020 Turkish drill ships discovered the massive sakaria gas field in the Black Sea that has the potential to completely revolutionize the Turkish energy industry forever over the past three years since that Discovery turkey has relentlessly pursued building out the infrastructure for a pipeline from sicaria to the Turkish Mainland and now as of 2023 the United States eia estimates that the natural gas reserves within the Turkish Black Sea eez are at around 25 trillion cubic feet which all on their own Grant turkey the 27th largest natural gas reserves in the world and about half of the gas reserves controlled by Azerbaijan one of the most significant exporters in the world consequently it is now expected that domestic Turkish Black Sea natural gas will eventually Supply about a third of turkey's entire domestic natural gas demand and dramatically improve turkey's energy security profile as a result as before this sudden Discovery they were importing just about a hundred percent of their entire natural gas demand from abroad and primarily from historic Turkish Rivals like the Russians and the Iranians significantly handicapping the flexibility of ankara's foreign policy as a prime example turkey hasn't been able to firmly push back against the Russians during the invasion of Ukraine and has refused to participate in any of the Western Financial sanctions supported by the rest of NATO partially because the Turks were importing 40 percent of their entire natural gas supply from Russia as recently as just last year in 2022. in addition to massive amounts of Russian oil and coal but now by 2026 when turkey's gas production is expected to have ramped up from the Black Sea in the sicaria field turkey will be able to begin weaning itself off of its imports from Russia and start being able to act more aggressively and assertively against Moscow including potentially by joining in alongside some of the Western Financial sanctions if push eventually comes to shove and at the same time the Black Sea discoveries for turkey have reduced their incentives to push more aggressively for their desired Maritime boundaries against Greece and Cyprus though the claims have still never been dropped by Ankara and continue to provide a source of tension between the Turks and NATO and the rest of the alliance but by far the biggest source of tension and difference between how turkey and the rest of NATO view the world came in Turkey South and Syria when Civil War first erupted in the country in 2011 turkey and the West were aligned on their goals for resolving the conflict Syria's long time but office dictator Bashar al-assad had to step down from Power the Assad regime in Turkey had historically had a very fraught relationship with Syria's continued claims on turkey's ate Province unresolved to Syria's protests about Turkish Dam construction taking place along the Euphrates River negatively impacting their own water supply to the Assad regime's overwhelming and brutal Crackdown on the initial anti-government protests that flared up in 2011 that would eventually send millions of Syrian refugees fleeing from the chaos and violence across the border into turkey but the initial agreement between turkey and the United States on the future of Assad in Syria being rapidly breaking down after the sudden explosion of Isis in the region in 2015. the United States decided to militarily intervene against Isis beginning in late 2014 and in order to do so they began heavily supporting the Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria who were actively fighting against Isis on the ground and were seeing a great degree of success doing so armed with Advanced American weapons and supported by more than 2 000 U.S military advisers and special forces the Syrian Kurds rolled Isis back and greatly expanded to carve out a de facto independent state within Syria that they began calling rojava which means West in the Kurdish language in reference to West Kurdistan Roja ended up expanding deep into the era majority areas of Syria well beyond the Kurdish majority part of the country and came to eventually be in control of about 25 percent of serious territory with several million inhabitants and virtually all of Syria's lucrative oil fields left on its own Roosevelt would be a major functioning country de facto led by the Kurds especially with its support from the United States and potentially from the other autonomous Kurdish government already established next door within Iraq but worst of all from turkey's perspective unlike the government of the krg and Northern Iraq that was reliant on turkey for their oil exports and economy the government of Roosevelt and Syria was incredibly and inexorably linked to the militant pkk group that was still waging its Insurgency across the Kurdish inhabited areas of Southeastern turkey in its own campaign for secession or autonomy from the Turkish government were turkey to lose control over the southeast of the country inhabited by the Kurds it would in a Flash lose about 15 million of its people but that's hardly what's most concerning to Ankara what is far more pressing is the fact that the headwaters for both the Tigers and the Euphrates rivers begin within the Kurdish inhabited area of Southeastern turkey roughly 45 percent of all the water in the Tigris begins within turkey while an overwhelming 90 percent of all the water in the Euphrates River also begins within turkey this is a massive source of fresh water for turkey to have secured for its own growing population an increasingly water stressed cities but the rivers don't just provide enormous freshwater supplies for turkey's own population ever since the 1960s the Turks have built a series of dozens of dams across both rivers in order to harness their hydroelectric and agricultural potential and to help further develop the rough interior of Anatolia and moreover their control over the majority of the water in both of the rivers gives them a very high degree of influence over both Syria and Iraq further Downstream who heavily rely on the water in the rivers for their own water supplies and among the many dams turkey is constructed along its sections of the rivers within the Kurdish inhabited area is the massive auditor Dam the third largest dam in the entire world as of 2023 built at a staggering cost of 1.25 billion dollars and with an installed power generating capacity of 2400 megawatts together with all of turkey's other various hydroelectric stations built on the rivers flowing down through its mountains the country usually generates approximately 30 percent of all its electricity but if the pkk were ever successful in establishing an autonomous area for turkey's Kurds or even outright Independence then turkey would lose control over both the Tigris and the Euphrates and in the process lose their massive freshwater supplies lose the source of nearly one-third of their electricity generation and be forced into making out the difference by importing more oil gas and coal from abroad and lose their ability to influence Syria and Iraq by removing their hands from their water supplies within Syria rojavaz led by a coalition of parties led by the Democratic union party or pyd an organization that was literally founded as the pkk's affiliate branch in Syria back in 2004. the pyd's armed Wings the ypg and the ypj have extremely close ideological and historic ties to the pkk in turkey and currently count more than a hundred thousand armed members among their ranks in Syria turkey therefore considers the ypg and the rojavan Syria to effectively be the very same organization as the pkk that is fighting for Independence or autonomy in Southeastern turkey and the absolute Terror within turkey is that a successful rojava could help the pkk by allowing them to establish bases and Training Camps within Syria and by funneling Advanced American-made weapons and equipment into the hands of the pkk finding their Insurgency against turkey turkey recognizes both the pkk and the ypg as Terror groups while the United States and most of the western world only recognizes that pkk is a terror group but not its affiliate Branch the ypg in Syria because as the United States has been massively supporting and arming the ypg to fight against Isis much to turkey's very vocal dismay and demands that the U.S and Western World Stopped their support to which the United States has never really given a firm end game in order to crush its perceived greatest security threat immediately across its border Turkey has done just about everything that it can to crush roge of Oz attempts at autonomy or Independence within Syria it is why the Turks have launched three separate invasions of Syria in 2016-2018 and in 2019 and came to occupy roughly five percent of serious territory in doing so to push rosheva back away from the Turkish border and to separate the ypg in Syria from being able to assist the pkk across the border in Turkey it is why the Turks blocked Sweden's accession into NATO for so long over their accusations that Sweden was allegedly supporting both the ypg and the pkk it is why turkey just shut down the kirkuk sehan crude oil pipeline out of fear is a potential contacts between the krg she in Iraqi Kurdistan the ypg and Syrian Kurdistan and the pkk in Turkish Kurdistan all working together towards a unified Kurdish front by shutting the pipeline down turkey is actively crashing the krg's economy which could cause the government there to collapse and potentially even start an internal Civil War within the krg that could lead to Baghdad reassuming control over the area which would send a very clear message to the other Kurdish groups both in Syria and in turkey that the Turkish government will absolutely never tolerate Kurdish autonomy developing anywhere neither within turkey itself nor Beyond turkey in either Iraq or in Syria the war that turkey has fought against the pkk across turkey Iraq and Syria ever since the 1980s into the present day is inexorably linked to this new map of turkey's desire to both retain control over its vast freshwater resources and retain its Geographic position as the crossroads for energy pipelines between Europe and Western Asia it is a war that has claimed the lives of more than 60 thousand people since it intensified in the early 1980s and it continues to seriously mire and negatively impact relations between turkey and the rest of NATO but unfortunately the next part of this video covering this darker side of turkey's geopolitical Ambitions and energy and water crises relating to its massive and catastrophic struggle with containing the pkk's armed Insurgency and Kurdish nationalism in the Southeast would almost certainly cause the rest of this video to become demonetized and age-restricted which ultimately would mean the YouTube's algorithm would have never promoted any of this video to you and you would probably never have seen any of it but thankfully I was still able to produce the next part of this video anyway because of the power of nebula where you can go and watch the next 50 minute long part right now covering the entire length of the ongoing conflict between turkey and the Kurdish people explaining where the pkk came from and what it wants and how the war has been fought by both sides across turkey Syria Iraq and even around the world and this is also just one of more than two dozen exclusive full-length real-life lore videos that you can only find on nebula and my overall modern conflict series covering recent major Wars and crises of the 21st century all of which can only be found over there because of all of their darker more controversial and more serious subject material that wouldn't work well with the algorithm here on YouTube that's built around showing you advertisements but which do work on nebula because there isn't an algorithm and there aren't any ads as a result there are dozens of episodes in my modern conflict series over there that you can go and watch right now to stay up to date with what's going on across our world from this video covering the modern Maritime conflict between turkey and Greece and even more depth than this video did episodes covering the Civil War Wars in Syria Libya and Yemen a two-part series covering the rise and fall of Isis episodes keeping up to date with the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine deeper dives into the United States Iran conflict or the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and tons of others with brand new episodes releasing over there every single month and what's even more you also get access to all of the other amazing exclusive content on nebula because the best part about this site is that it's jointly co-owned by all of its creators built by me and hundreds of other independent YouTubers and podcasters and because it's a subscription-based service we all get to work on way bigger and higher budget Productions over there than we could ever do on YouTube that's why modern conflicts exists and why there's tons of other top quality exclusive content on nebula that you'll find equally fascinating for my Creator friends like Wendover Productions mustard Neo real engineering and tons of others and best of all if you sign up by following the link here on screen or down below in the description you'll receive an insanely good 40 discount off of an annual subscription which means it'll only cost you two and a half dollars a month for all of this awesome exclusive content from myself and hundreds of other independent creators and for a very limited time we're also offering lifetime memberships to nebula a one-time payment that lets you access everything that will ever exist on nebula for as long as both you and nebula exist lifetime memberships are the absolute best way to support real life lore and other creators we're using the money they raise to fund the production of even bigger and more ambitious nebula original series still to come so sign up for either a lifetime membership or an annual membership by clicking the button that's here on your screen right now or by following the link that's down below in the description and as always thank you so much for watching thank you