For NATO, Turkey is a disruptive ally
WASHINGTON – When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this month threatened to block NATO membership for Finland and Sweden, Western officials were outraged – but not shocked.
Within an alliance that works through consensus, the Turkish strong man has come to be seen as something of a stickup artist. In 2009, he blocked the appointment of a new NATO chief from Denmark, complaining that the country was too tolerant of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and too sympathetic to “Kurdish terrorists” based in Turkey. It took hours of lure from Western leaders and a face-to-face promise from President Barack Obama that NATO would appoint a Turk to a leadership position, in order to satisfy Erdogan.
Following a breach of relations between Turkey and Israel next year, Erdogan prevented the alliance from working with the Jewish state for six years. A few years later, Erdogan for months delayed a NATO plan to consolidate Eastern European countries against Russia, again quoting Kurdish militants and demanding that the alliance declare that those operating in Syria are terrorists. In 2020, Erdogan sent a gas exploration vessel backed by fighter jets near Greek waters, prompting France to send ships in support of Greece, also a NATO member.
Now the Turkish leader is back in the role of obstructionist and once again invokes the Kurds, when he accuses Sweden and Finland of sympathizing with the Kurdish militants he has made his main enemy.
“These countries have almost become boarding houses for terrorist organizations,” he said this month. “It is not possible for us to be for.”
Mr Erdogan’s stance is a reminder of a long-standing problem for NATO, which currently has 30 members. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may have given the alliance a new sense of mission, but NATO still has to contend with an authoritarian leader who is willing to use his leverage to gain political points at home by blocking consensus – at least for a time.
This is a situation that is in favor of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, who has become friendlier with Erdogan in recent years. For the Russian leader, the rejection of Swedish and Finnish entry into NATO would be a significant victory.
The problem would be easier if it were not for Turkey’s importance to the alliance. The country joined NATO in 1952 after joining the West against the Soviet Union; Turkey gives the alliance a crucial strategic position at the intersection of Europe and Asia, across both the Middle East and the Black Sea. It hosts a large US air base where US nuclear weapons are stored, and Erdogan has blocked Russian warships on their way to Ukraine.
But under Mr Erdogan, Turkey has increasingly become a problem that needs to be addressed. As Prime Minister and then as President, he has leaned his country away from Europe while exercising an authoritarian and populist brand of Islamist politics, especially after a failed coup attempt in 2016.
He has bought an advanced missile system from Russia that NATO officials call a threat to their integrated defense system, and in 2019 he made a military incursion to fight Kurds in northern Syria who helped fight the Islamic State with US support.
“During my four years there, it was quite often 27 against one,” said Ivo H. Daalder, a US ambassador to NATO during the Obama administration, when the alliance had 28 members.
Mr Erdogan’s objections to membership in Sweden and Finland have even renewed questions about whether NATO can do better without Turkey.
One opinion piece This month, co-authored by Joseph I. Lieberman, a former independent U.S. senator from Connecticut, argued that Erdogan’s Turkey would reject the Alliance’s standards of democratic rule in future new member states. The paper, published by The Wall Street Journal, warned that Ankara’s policies, including a coziness with Putin, had undermined NATO’s interests and that the alliance should investigate ways to oust Turkey.
“Turkey is a member of NATO, but under Mr Erdogan it no longer adheres to the values that underpin this great alliance,” wrote Lieberman and Mark D. Wallace, executive director of the Turkish Democracy Project, a group critical of Mr. Erdogan.
Some members of Congress have said so much. “Turkey under Erdogan should not and cannot be seen as an ally,” said Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, following Turkey’s invasion of Syria in 2019.
But NATO is a military alliance, and Turkey, with the second largest army in the organization, an advanced defense industry and its crucial geographical position, plays a crucial role.
Western officials say Turkey would only cause more problems as an outraged NATO ally – and one that could adapt closer to Russia.
“Turkey has undermined its own image,” said Alper Coskun, a former Turkish diplomat who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But, he added, “it is still a critical member of the alliance.”
Again, the question is what will mitigate Erdogan and secure his support for admitting Sweden and Finland.
President Biden underlined US support for the move when he hosted the leaders of the two nations in the White House this month and praised a larger NATO as a check against Russian power. “Biden took an extremely exposed position with high visibility by inviting them to Washington,” said James F. Jeffrey, a U.S. ambassador to Turkey during the Obama administration.
Most analysts believe that Erdogan will not ultimately block the accession of Sweden and Finland, but that he wants to highlight Turkey’s own security problems and make domestic political success ahead of the elections in his country next year.
Erdogan is mainly concerned about Sweden’s long-standing support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is striving for an independent Kurdish state on territory partly within Turkey’s borders.
The PKK, which has attacked non-military targets and killed civilians in Turkey, is banned in that country and is designated by both the US and the EU as a terrorist organization, although some governments, including Sweden, see it more sympathetically as a Kurd. nationalist movement.
The United States has also supported its affiliated fighters in Syria, the YPG, or the People’s Protection Units, who helped fight the Islamic State and whom Mr Erdogan attacked in his 2019 invasion of the country.
The Turkish president wants the YPG to be designated as a terrorist group as well.
Erdogan accuses both Finland and Sweden of harboring supporters of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish priest living in exile in the United States, whom he accuses of the 2016 coup. Gulen.
Erdogan also objects to Swedish and Finnish arms embargoes against his country, which were introduced after the 2019 invasion of Syria. Sweden is already discussing lifting the embargo in light of current events in Ukraine.
Some analysts say that Erdogan’s government views the PKK in the same way that Washington saw Al Qaeda 20 years ago, and that the West can not dismiss the concerns if it hopes to do business with Turkey.
Biden administration officials downplay the conflict and expect Erdogan to reach a compromise with Finland and Sweden. Turkish officials met in Ankara with Finnish and Swedish counterparts for several hours last week.
Julianne Smith, US Ambassador to NATO, said in an interview that “this seems to be an issue they have with Sweden and Finland, so we leave it in their hands.” She added that the United States would provide assistance if needed.
Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken spoke to Finland’s Foreign Minister in Washington on Friday, saying he was “confident that we will work through this process quickly and that things will move forward with both countries.”
Emre Peker, a London-based director for Europe at Eurasia Group, a private consulting firm, said he did not believe Mr Erdogan was seeking concessions from Washington. He expressed confidence that Turkey could work out an agreement with Sweden and Finland with the mediation of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
Mr Erdogan’s top priorities are to hear his country’s security concerns for Kurdish separatists and to have arms embargoes asserted, Peker said.
Some US analysts are skeptical. Eric S. Edelman, a former US ambassador to Turkey and Finland, warned that Mr Erdogan could try to gain Mr Putin’s favor – or at least alleviate anger in Moscow over the sale of deadly drones to the Ukrainian military by a private Turkish company.
“He has this very complicated relationship with Putin that he has to maintain,” Edelman said. “This is a good way to throw a small leg at Putin – ‘I’m still useful to you.’
Others believe that the Turkish leader wants payment from Washington. Mr Erdogan is angry that the United States denied Turkey access to the F-35 stealth fighter after his 2017 purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system. Turkey is now lobbying instead of buying improved F-16 fighter jets but has met strong opposition in Congress from those like Mr. Menendez.
Mr Erdogan may also be seeking the President’s attention. He had a friendly relationship with President Donald J. Trump, but Mr. Biden has kept his distance.
“This is a man who must be at the center,” said Daalder, the former US ambassador to NATO. “This is a way of saying, ‘Hey, I’m still here. You have to be aware of my problems. ‘”
Peker believes that an agreement can be negotiated between Turkey and the Nordic countries before a NATO summit in Madrid next month, which would make it possible to sign the accession protocols there.
More likely, some analysts say, Biden will have to nod to Erdogan in Madrid to accept his consent, which Obama had to do at a 2009 NATO summit to secure the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as secretary general.
On a lecture organized by the Council on Foreign Relations Last week, Representative Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington and chairman of Parliament’s Armed Committee, suggested that the efforts for Swedish and Finnish membership were large enough to justify direct American involvement.
“We have to sit down and we have to close a deal,” he said. Smith. “And we have to be aggressive about it, like now.”
Michael Crowley reported from Washington, and Steven Erlanger from Brussels. Erik Schmitt contributed with reporting from Washington.