SNAPSHOT: Turkey and NATO, a crumbling alliance?

For years now, the Turkish government has fostered a fractious relationship not only with the ‘West’ (in a broad civilisational sense) but many of the country’s NATO allies.

The causes are numerous. Diverging foreign policies, deeply embedded regional feuds and an unwillingness for the country to adhere to the multilateralism that has dictated much of the world’s affairs since the end of the Second World War.

Amin Saikal, adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia, writing in ASPI’s The Strategist, illuminated the sharp decline in Turkey’s relationship with the West in recent months.

“President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week ordered the expulsion from Turkey of ambassadors of 10 Western countries, including NATO allies such as the United States, for meddling in Turkey’s internal affairs. The envoys had issued a joint statement asking for the release of the jailed philanthropist Osman Kavala,” Professor Saikal suggested.

While he argues that the diplomatic “calamity was averted”, the attempted expulsion of foreign diplomats was the latest of a long list of run-ins with the country’s NATO allies.

“On the external front, Erdogan has been persistently critical of the US and some European allies for a number of perceived transgressions. He has rebuked them for failing to back fully his widespread crackdown on opposition, provide sufficient assistance to Turkey to cope with the burden of the Syrian refugees, and abandon their co-operation with Kurdish minorities in Syria and Iraq as a source of aid to the autonomy-seeking Turkish Kurds,” Professor Saikal continued.

Interestingly, Turkey’s foreign policy has diverged with the West at both a grand strategy level by seeking closer ties with China and Russia, and at a regional level by openly rebuking the West’s allies in the Middle East and north Africa.

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“He has concurrently forged close economic, trade and strategic ties with Russia and China and expanded Turkey’s role in the Muslim Middle East. While chiding Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians under occupation and sympathising with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Egypt and shunned in many other Arab countries, he has intervened in several regional conflict zones from Syria to Libya and joined forces with oil-rich Qatar to widen Turkey’s influence,” Professor Saikal explained.

Since the Arab Spring, the country’s influence building in the Middle East and north Africa has reached new heights. From deepening alliances with Qatar and Pakistan, to supporting transnational organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and aiding insurgencies in Syria and Libya – Turkey has seemingly side lined old alliances in favour of a new regime marked by unrepentant unilateralism.

Nowhere is this unilateralism more pertinent than in the Libyan civil war.

In 2011, NATO warships began patrolling the Mediterranean to enforce the UN’s ban on arms shipments to war ravaged Libya. Since then, Turkey has been accused on numerous occasions by their NATO allies of breaching the arms ban.  

In 2015, Greece intercepted a shipment of weapons from Turkey to Libya to which the Turkish government responded that the weapons were in fact bound for the Sudanese police force. Similarly in 2018, Greek authorities seized an explosive laden vessel leaving Turkish ports bound for Libya. In response, the Turkish government outlined that the ship was in fact a “Tanzania-flagged cargo vessel” and was allegedly destined for Ethiopia – and not Libya.

The alleged breaches continued to heat up.

Last year, German MEP Özlem Demirel asked the European Parliament, “There is clear evidence to suggest that the Turkish Government has, since last year, been regularly smuggling arms shipments into Libya in breach of the UN arms embargo. On 10 July 2020 a potentially dangerous situation arose when a Greek frigate, the ‘Spetsai’, sought to carry out an inspection of the ‘Çirkin’ freighter, which was carrying an arms consignment, and was prevented from doing so by three Turkish warships. A further incident occurred shortly afterwards when a French navy vessel taking part in a NATO mission was targeted by Turkish vessels using a fire-control radar when it moved in to inspect a freighter. At the same time, Turkey has also been engaged in a military exercise involving eight warships and 17 aircraft in the eastern Mediterranean off the Libyan coast.”

If that wasn’t enough, in 2020 Turkey’s TSK Çakabey Harekât Planlama Direktifi was leaked to the public.

Or in other words, Turkey’s strategy for the invasion of Greece and Armenia.

“The documents unveiled by Nordic Monitor reveals that the invasion plan against Greece has existed since 2014, but the one for Armenia, codenamed TSK Altay Harekât Planlama Direktifi, has existed since at least August 15, 2000,” Paul Antonopoulos wrote in the Greek City Times.

“These secret and classified documents were accidentally revealed for public viewing when an Ankara-based investigating prosecutor, Serdar Coşkun, that Nordic Monitor says is a loyalist of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, ‘forgot’ to remove the documents before submitting them to the court when they were collected from the General Staff headquarters during an investigation into a failed coup against the Turkish president on July 15, 2016.”

Such plans are not a simple divergence from NATO policy. An invasion of a fellow NATO ally is an absolute abrogation of the raison d’etre of the alliance.

To this day, however, President Erdogan has sent few signals that he is interested in building inroads with his NATO allies.

Last week, the Greek City Times reported that Turkey would snub the UN, German and Italian-led summit regarding the Libyan civil war if Israel, Greece and Cyprus were invited to the meeting.

“We cannot attend a Paris conference to which Greece, Israel and the Greek Cypriot administration participate, we told him,” President Erdogan was reported as telling reporters.

“This is our condition. If these countries are to attend the conference, then there is also no need to send special representatives.”

With the next Turkish general election scheduled for 2023, and President Erdogan lagging significantly in the polls, all eyes will remain fixated on the actions of the President who has carved an extremely unique path for the country. 

Though, it appears evident that for the time being, Turkey is a member of NATO in name only.

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