Turkey and NATO

by Eduardo del Buey

Turkey and NATO

In view of recent decisions by the Turkish government, I am led to question the value of Turkey to NATO.

Turkey is an autocratic, expansionist, and Islamist country that is now home to Hamas, a major terrorist organization, and allied in many ways to Iran and Russia, two of the Western world’s primary foes.

Readers will recall that, when NATO was formed, Turkey was the only member state that bordered the then Soviet Union.

This, together with the fact that Turkey had and continues to have the largest standing army among the European states, made Turkey a key strategic partner for the organization.

In 1962, the alliance with Turkey and the fact that it hosted U.S. Jupiter missiles provided President Kennedy with a negotiating proposal during the Cuban missile crisis: the Soviets would remove their missiles from Cuba and the U.S. would in turn remove the Jupiters from Turkey.

Thus, a major conflagration was averted, and the Cold War remained cold.

Since then, much has changed.

Until 2014, Turkey was a secular state committed to founder Kamal Ataturk’s vision that had left Islamism behind after World War I.

This is no longer true.

In 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdogan became Turkey’s president. He soon took Turkey down an autocratic and Islamist path. As well, he is and an avowed expansionist seeking to regain the Ottoman Empire’s former glory.

Before Erdogan assumed power, Turkey and Israel enjoyed a good relationship. It began to deteriorate when Erdogan began to support Palestinian terrorists in their quest to eliminate Israel from the region and began assuming the terrorist organization’s antisemitic convictions.

While Erdogan’s Islamist roots and ideology played a role, so did his geopolitical ambitions.

He has since appeared to align Turkey with Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, threatened to invade Israel, and tried to purchase advanced weaponry from Russia. The U.S. had to exert strong pressure to dissolve this deal, but the bad taste remains.

Erdogan has provided the Hamas with support and a safe haven over the years and allowed wounded terrorists to obtain medical assistance there.

Qatar evicted Hamas’s leadership from Doha last month, and Erdogan has invited the terrorist organization to set up its headquarters in Ankara.

This is dangerous for NATO and for the region.

If Hamas uses Turkey as a terrorist base for operations against Israel, this is sure to eventually invite Israeli military retaliation that could be interpreted as an Israeli attack on Turkey.

Turkey could then invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, forcing all members to declare war on Israel since an attack on one is considered an attack on all. Either this, or dilute NATO’s credibility and weaken it against Russia and the Islamist world.

There are other bones of contention with NATO.

Turkey has occupied half of Cyprus since 1974 and shows no sign of leaving.

Cyprus is a member of the European Union, and this development is one of the reasons why the E.U has put the kibosh on Turkish membership.

As well, Erdogan has massacred hundreds of thousands of Kurds over the past few years, starving them and denying them water.

In short, what the International Criminal Court (ICC) has accused Israel of committing in Gaza.

These charges have led the Court to issue a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

And yet, Erdogan remains free of any charges and a partner in NATO.

With respect to Erdogan’s expansionist policies, the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies argues that from the Middle East to North Africa via the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey is trying to assert its influence in a region that is highly unstable.

In a recent article, the think tank Carnegie Politika asked “Is Turkey on the side of Russia or the West when it comes to the ongoing war in Ukraine? The answer is that it depends on your viewpoint”.

On the one hand, Ankara provides military and diplomatic support to Kyiv.

President Erdoğan has vowed never to accept Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territory: the same position he took during Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Turkey has played a crucial role in securing Ukraine’s seaborne exports, initially through a UN-brokered grain deal, and now thanks to a corridor in its territorial waters. 

It is also playing a role in keeping the Black Sea open for international shipping.

On the other hand, Turkey never joined the West in imposing sanctions on Russia.

It has become a major buyer of Russian crude oil, behind only China and India. While most of Europe has cut aviation links with Russia, Istanbul airport remains a hub for flights to and from Russia’s major cities – acting as a strategic link between Russia and the West.

Is an autocratic, expansionist Turkey that has close relations with Russia and Iran, massacres hundreds of thousands in its neighbourhood, oppresses political opponents at home and abroad, and quite possibly seeks to embroil NATO in a regional war involving Israel and in support for Erdogan’s terrorist friends a reliable partner for NATO?

Or does Turkey retain enough of a strategic value to warrant continued membership?

A question for member states to ponder as the geopolitical tectonic plates in the region continue to shift in unpredictable directions.