Turkey Stratfor has long predicted that the role of regional hegemon will eventually fall to Turkey , which boasts the largest economy in the Middle East and is strategically situated at the confluence of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, on the Sea of Marmara. It is not a coincidence that what is now the Turkish commercial capital spent more than 1,500 years as the center of powerful empires, from 330 CE, when the Byzantine Empire was founded, until 1918, when the Ottoman Empire fell. Like the United States , Turkey has some converging interests with Iran; its rivalry with its neighbor to the east is not a zero-sum competition. For one, Turkey depends on Iranian oil, which in 2014 made up 26 percent of Turkey's oil imports. Lifting sanctions on Iran will offer Turkey's commercial class, which is hungry for the potential economic returns, ample opportunity to invest.