One could almost hear the glee in Ankara when the country’s
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan upended NATO consensus by declaring he would not
support the Swedish and Finnish bids for membership of the alliance. For
Turkish political elites, this was not a fractious president being difficult –
it was a Turkish leader refusing to be a yes man for Europe.
اضافة اعلان
“Are they coming to Turkey to try and persuade us?”
Erdogan asked after both countries sent negotiators to Ankara to mollify the
president. “Then they should not bother,” he declared.
After weeks of talks, both Sweden and Finland
appeared to offer enough guarantees on the two issues Ankara was concerned about
– support for Kurdish militants and restrictions on arms sales – for the
country to relent. On Tuesday morning, both countries signed the accession
protocols and formally began the ratification process.
For Erdogan’s supporters, this was a win all around.
To them, it did not matter that Turkey had shown an unwillingness to back the
alliance at a moment of deep peril, nor that some were openly asking if it were
time to remove Turkey from the alliance.
“For NATO, Turkey is a disruptive ally,” declared the
New York Times. Turkey’s combative president certainly does not mind being the
odd man out; he often appears to relish it. Rarely, however, is the question
asked why Turkey is so disruptive to the alliance, and whether that disruption
actually works in Erdogan’s favor.
There is a past and a present reason for Turkey’s
disruptiveness.
The past reason is that, up until the moment of
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO was in the midst of an existential crisis
and did not know what it stood for. The ostensible reason for its founding, the
Soviet threat, had long passed, and the alliance was stumbling, declared by the
French president Emmanuel Macron to be “brain dead”, and openly criticized by
the previous American president.
Earlier this
year, Donald Trump boasted he had threatened not to defend NATO allies from a
Russian attack in 2018 – in essence undermining the Article 5
collective–defense clause that underpins the alliance. NATO had friends like
that, but no clear enemy.
Against that backdrop, Turkey could pursue its own
agenda, which appeared to be mainly picking fights with other NATO members –
with Greece over islands in the Aegean Sea and with America over its purchase
of the Russian–made S–400 missile defense systems.
With no clear enemy, there was no clear strategy for
the alliance, and so Turkey was able to use it as simply one more political
forum through which to achieve its aims. Turkey could not be accused of
undermining the security of the alliance, because there was no one enemy –
there were several threats, but these threats were not always viewed in the
same way by NATO members, contributing to a sense of fracture and drift.
That was before. After the Russia invasion, NATO has
once again found its footing. Indeed, these few months have been as crucial to
the alliance’s sense of self as the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet
Union or the years of its birth. There is a renewed sense of purpose. Of
threat. Of mission.
And yet, Turkey is now different. The Turkey which
joined the alliance in 1952 was a vital bulwark on the alliance’s southern
flank and, with the largest army in Europe, would have been first in line
against a hypothetical Soviet threat.
But Turkey has changed. It is no longer a lower
middle–income country willing to send its conscripts into someone else’s war.
Turkey is proud of its defense capabilities and its drone technology now has
the proven ability to turn the tides of war. Turkey wants to be respected as a
member of the alliance, at the moment when the alliance is grappling with a new
future. Hence, the disruption, born of a desire to be considered an equal, no
longer a yes man.
Does such disruption give Turkey the status it
desires? That is a tricky calculation. In times of peace, or at least strategic
stability, being a team player is the best option. But in a time of flux,
disruption can lead to strategic gains.
That certainly appears to be Erdogan’s calculation.
The Ukraine war has led to an astonishing and seismic shift on the European
continent, all the more astonishing for being barely remarked upon. For the
first time in decades, Germany is rearming, setting up a special 100 billion
euro fund to modernize its military.
“We need aircraft, we need ships, we need soldiers,”
the German chancellor told his parliament, to cheers and clapping. The sight of
Europe’s largest economy rearming might once have sparked fear on the continent
– but the world has changed since 1945, or even 1952.
For Erdogan, this is a moment to act and not merely
quietly say yes. It was a gamble that has paid off for now, and one which suits
his decisive, if not always measured, personality. He has learned, after all,
from the reshaping of the conflict in northern Syria – that whoever acts
fastest and most decisively shapes the terrain.
Faisal Al Yafai is currently writing a book on the Middle East
and is a frequent commentator on international TV news networks. He worked for
news outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC, and reported on the Middle East,
Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. ©Syndication Bureau.
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