Not more than 10 years ago, Turkey was viewed hopefully: an Islamic country with a vibrant democracy; a stable NATO member with borders adjacent to unstable states; a growing economy still attractive for foreign investment despite a legal environment known for its endless appeals; and a bulwark against Iranian and Russian regional hegemony. These hopes are now dashed.
The quickening divorce by Ankara from its NATO roots -Turkey is a 65-year member of the Alliance - is potentially the most troubling, overshadowing even the move to outright authoritarian rule by Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
- Turkey's refusal to allow German lawmakers to visit FRG troops at Incirlik airbase and the subsequent withdrawal last summer of all German forces from Turkey was only the most visible manifestation of a long-deepening rift between Ankara and the North Atlantic Alliance.
Given the stakes, one hopes that the Turkey-NATO "family quarrel" would be resolved as a matter of urgency. However, it won't be. That's the simple bottom line. Veteran Turkey observers talk about a forthcoming "tipping point" in our relations with this key ally; but sadly, we are long passed the tipping point. Erdogan has moved Turkey away from the west in ways that are stunning: buying Russian air defense systems, siding with Qatar in the Sunni family dispute, drawing closer to Iran over the Kurdish question, turning his country into an authoritarian police state, and now a seemingly never-ending series of diplomatic quarrels with the U.S. over who was responsible for the 2016 coup that nearly unseated Erdogan. This won't change as long as Erdogan is in charge; and he's not going anywhere fast.
There is a geo-strategic reality that softens some of this misfortune: as sacrilegious as this might sound, Turkey counts for far less strategically than it did during the Cold War. Yes, the U.S. and Europe would like to have Turkey as a loyal and cooperative NATO member; but this is not the 80's. And many of Turkey's neighbors and those in the immediate "neighborhood" who were Warsaw Pact members (or living under Tito) are now in NATO!
- These include Bulgaria (an immediate neighbor), Romania, Albania, and Montenegro. These NATO accessions, particularly Bulgaria and the Balkan countries, drive Putin crazy; Moscow for over a century has viewed this region as lying within its "strategic sphere of influence." As long as these countries remain outside that sphere, they make Turkey less important.
President Trump is probably right to sidle up to Erdogan, to keep a really bad situation from going completely off the rails. It could be worse -- Russian basing agreements in Turkey, for example, or Turkey invading Iraq Kurdistan and staying there. But any thought that the Europeans or the U.S. can diplomatically intervene at this point and nudge Erdogan to restore a Western-friendly, politically diverse government is a pipe dream.
