More recently, there has been an increase in Turkish violations of Greek airspace in the tight confines of the Aegean Sea while commentators in Ankara make spurious allegations that Greece seeks war. The following summer, the Turkish Navy menaced Greek naval vessels in the Eastern Mediterranean as they monitored Turkish gas prospecting in the waters between Cyprus and Crete and threatened a French warship enforcing the weapons embargo on Libya. Turkey was subsequently suspended from the F-35 program, and the United States sanctioned Turkey under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act over the S-400. officials also expressed concern that if Turkey possessed both the S-400 and the 100 F-35 joint strike fighters it had on ordered, the Russians might be able to glean intelligence on the plane’s capabilities. Then, in 2019, the Turkish government took delivery of the Russian S-400 air defense system, which is believed to be a formidable challenge to NATO aircraft. The Obama administration mollified the Turks by promising that information from the system would only be shared with the Israelis, according to the Washington Post, “ indirectly.” 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 the data from the radar would be shared with Israel. It has been more than a decade since it happened, so few likely remember that then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held up the deployment of NATO radar that was set to be deployed on Turkish territory. That Turkey is an important NATO ally is self-evident, but it is also true that it is not much of a partner, at times evincing indifference to other members’ concerns and, at other moments, outright hostility. The Turks have also opposed the Russians where NATO has not been directly involved-notably in Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey provided valuable support to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, fully and actively participates in the alliance’s exercises and missions, and has been supportive in NATO’s effort to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion. As the NATO summit approaches, it is worth asking: What possible benefit does the Turkish government derive from being a disruptive force within NATO? Well, several.īefore an outraged Turkish official lodges a complaint with Foreign Policy and/or the Council on Foreign Relations-it has happened before-let me dutifully point out that although Turkey does not spend more than 2 percent of its GDP on defense (the NATO spending target), it has the second-largest military in NATO. Yet it is precisely because Ankara is a burr in the other NATO members’ backsides that throwing Turkey out has become a refrain for so many of Ankara’s opponents and critics. The only way Turkey leaves the alliance is if the Turks and their leaders decide to leave. It seems so odd that this issue comes up again and again since there is no mechanism by which the other members of NATO can remove Turkey from the alliance. It happened most recently this spring as Turkey ramped up its incursions and overflights of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, refused to sanction Russia, and threw up obstacles to the expansion of NATO. Every time there is some controversy within NATO involving Turkey, a small but noisy group of elected officials, advocates, and analysts demand that Ankara be thrown out of the alliance.
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