[Nineteen_Kilo]

Syria and Iran, under the Bush Doctrine, are hostile powers, and therefore fair game for us to carve up at will, IMO. Turkey could not be compelled to surrender territory, but if open borders between our newly-created representative democracies are maintained, there's no reason disgruntled Turkish citizens couldn't relocated to their south and east.

What benefits accrue to using a Swiss-style canton system versus, say, a plain vanilla parliament?

[father_elijah]

Some sense of regional autonomy can be included and contained i.e., a Kurdish canton(s), a Shia canton(s), a Sunni canton(s), a secularist canton, etc. Then the pride issues involved are addressed and the separatist tendencies calmed.