Possible Clues:

• As I am in the alternative to being the start of the East
• A country once popular, or several?
• Where there's not a European underground worker, by the sound fo it
• Where there is a Roman, I will not find Rome there
• Anatolia, today
• Historic region one must enter before being able to vote?
• Anatolia is a country formerly concerned with gold
• I will support a former country, and not as part of Turkey
• A country once in open revolt, initially in Anatolia
• Home of the Hittite Empire