HS Alliance
Whenever there is a controversy within NATO involving Turkey, a small but vocal group of elected civil servants, defendersand analysts demand that Ankara be excluded from the alliance. It happened most recently this spring as Turkey stepped up its incursions and overflights of the Greek Aegean islands, refused to sanction Russia and erected obstacles to NATO expansion.
It seems so strange that this issue keeps coming up since there is no mechanism by which other NATO members can remove Turkey from the alliance. The only way for Turkey to leave the alliance is if the Turks and their leaders decide to leave.
Yet it is precisely because Ankara is a scum in the butt of other NATO members that kicking Turkey out has become the refrain of so many opponents and critics of Ankara. As the NATO summit approaches, it is worth asking: what potential advantage does the Turkish government derive from being a disruptive force within NATO? Well, several.
Whenever there is a controversy within NATO involving Turkey, a small but vocal group of elected civil servants, defendersand analysts demand that Ankara be excluded from the alliance. It happened most recently this spring as Turkey stepped up its incursions and overflights of the Greek Aegean islands, refused to sanction Russia and erected obstacles to NATO expansion.
It seems so strange that this issue keeps coming up since there is no mechanism by which other NATO members can remove Turkey from the alliance. The only way for Turkey to leave the alliance is if the Turks and their leaders decide to leave.
Yet it is precisely because Ankara is a scum in the butt of other NATO members that kicking Turkey out has become the refrain of so many opponents and critics of Ankara. As the NATO summit approaches, it is worth asking: what potential advantage does the Turkish government derive from being a disruptive force within NATO? Well, several.
Before an outraged Turkish official lodged a complaint with Foreign Police and/or the Council on Foreign Relations – this has already happened – allow me to point out conscientiously that even if Turkey does not spend more than 2 percent of its GDP to defense (NATO’s spending target), it has the second largest army in NATO. Turkey has provided valuable support to NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, participates fully and actively in alliance exercises and missions, and has supported NATO’s efforts to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion. The Turks have also clashed with the Russians where NATO has not been directly involved, including in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh.
That Turkey is an important NATO ally goes without saying, but it is also true that it is not really a partner, sometimes showing indifference to the concerns of other members and at other times , outright hostility.
It’s been more than a decade since this happened, so few probably remember that then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan delayed the deployment of the NATO radar which was to be deployed in the territory Turkish. The system, which also had components in Romania and Poland, was designed to provide early warning of an Iranian missile launch, but Erdogan initially balked because radar data would be shared with Israel. The Obama administration placated the Turks by promising that information from the system would only be shared with Israelis, according to the Washington Post“indirectly.”
Then, in 2019, the Turkish government took delivery of the Russian S-400 air defense system, which is considered a formidable challenge for NATO aircraft. US officials also expressed concern that if Turkey had both the S-400 and the 100 F-35 joint strike fighters it had ordered, the Russians might be able to glean intelligence. on the capabilities of the aircraft. The Turks, however, ignored the objections of NATO and the United States. Turkey was later suspended from the F-35 program and the United States sanctioned Turkey under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act for the S-400.
The following summer, the Turkish navy threatened Greek navy ships in the eastern Mediterranean as they monitored Turkish gas prospecting in the waters between Cyprus and Crete and threatened a French warship enforcing the embargo on arms against Libya.
More recently, there has been an increase in Turkish violations of Greek airspace in the narrow confines of the Aegean Sea while Ankara commentators make false allegations that Greece seeks war. And, of course, Turkey has blocked offers of NATO membership from Sweden and Finland, which after years of neutrality have been scared enough by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to seek quickly join the alliance.
Ankara’s concerns about Stockholm and Helsinki are mostly misleading. Yes, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is a terrorist organization, and yes, there are PKK militants and sympathizers in Sweden and Finland. But there is no threat to Turkey’s national security from these countries joining NATO.
In general, making yourself the least liked member of a club doesn’t seem like a good strategy, because it’s hard for friends and partners to see things your way. What’s the saying? “You catch more bees with honey?” This rule only applies when there are consequences for its off-putting actions, which brings us back to the call for Turkey’s expulsion from NATO. Because NATO’s founding fathers saw no need to include a procedure for revoking membership, Turkey derives benefits from being the creaking wheel of the alliance.
With no way to tear Turkey from its ranks, NATO officials need to appease Ankara, which is why NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Turkey’s security concerns over Sweden and Finland are “legit.” In thus validating Turkey’s concerns, Stoltenberg signals that the only way out of the current impasse is for the Swedes and Finns to comply with Ankara’s demands. This would be a victory for Turkey both in Europe and at home, simultaneously dealing a blow to the PKK and forcing potential new NATO members to submit to Turkish rule.
Yet the kind of concession Stoltenberg envisions — where the Swedes and Finns renounce PKK members and lift arms embargoes against Turkey for its past military incursions into Syria — is unlikely to seal the deal for Sweden and Finland, because right now it seems clear that Erdogan is negotiating not so much with NATO as with US President Joe Biden through the Swedes and Finns. The Turkish leader calculates that the Russian invasion is such an emergency that by delaying NATO expansion at this critical juncture, he can coerce the White House into ignoring congressional objections to a plan to sell new F- 16 and F-16 upgrade kits to the Turkish Air Force.
Much of the controversy over Sweden and Finland as well as Ankara’s unnecessarily aggressive stance towards Greece and efforts to snatch new military equipment from the United States are tied to Erdogan’s domestic politics. This is not the only factor, of course, but Erdogan’s decision soft poll numbers figure prominently in its approach to NATO. The Turkish public mainly blames NATO for the current conflict in Ukraine, and in this they show distrust of the alliance. Anecdotally, I don’t know a single Turk who thinks NATO members will defend Turkey if attacked, citing European ambivalence towards the PKK and Washington’s relationship with its Syrian affiliate, the United Nations. protection of the people.
Accordingly, being disruptive within NATO is a good political strategy for Erdogan. This is particularly important now because he can demonstrate that Turkey is still a player and can weigh in Brussels after Ankara intimidated much of the Middle East but proved unable to impose its will on the region. Having reached the limits of its power and desperate for funding, investment and goodwill, Ankara has sought rapprochement with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt.
If Erdogan is finally able to wring concessions from Sweden, Finland and the United States, it would be a big victory for him politically. I can just imagine the giddy headlines of the Turkish President’s devoted press gloating about how he killed the Kurds, the United States and the West to preserve Turkish power and dignity (or such a statement). If he fails, Erdogan can still play with the vast reservoir of anti-Americanism and distrust of NATO in Turkey to turn failure into a nationalist cause. Rallying Turks around the flag in the face of what are often seen as Western affronts is always good political strategy for Turkish leaders. It’s good to be Erdogan: when he wins, he wins, and sometimes when he loses, he always wins.
Whenever the false debate about expelling Turkey from NATO comes up, an official always says that it is better to have Turkey in the tent than out. The problem is that any effort to keep the Turks inside the tent only invites more disruption. Thanks to the founders of NATO, their descendants are stuck with a grumpy ally in Turkey. And no matter how badly some people want it, there’s no way to get rid of it.