LONDON — Turkey could invoke the collective defense provision of the NATO treaty against Syrian Kurdish militias, a presidential adviser said amid a dispute over the American partnership with those fighters.
“We do not question the viability of Article 5; on the contrary, we expect it to be fulfilled,” Gulnur Aybet, a senior foreign policy adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said today at NATO Engages, an international town hall in advance of a main summit. “A NATO that is fit for purpose would acknowledge this existential threat to Turkey, and this would actually make NATO stronger.”
Those remarks underscored Erdogan’s commitment to a policy that has worsened his relations with the United States and with the broader alliance, as the Turkish assault on the Syrian Kurds has angered American and European leaders. The Syrian Kurdish militias did most of the fighting to dismantle the Islamic State, but Turkey regards them as a separatist force that threatens Turkish security.
“If NATO members do not recognize this existential threat to Turkey, I think this will undermine NATO,” Aybet said. “You cannot have a compromise and address the immediate national security concerns of some allies and not address the immediate national security concerns of another ally. So, in terms of national security concerns, we really have to be on the same page. Otherwise, we will not be able to agree on anything else.”
Erdogan’s forces attacked the Syrian Kurds in October despite warnings from the U.S. that the assault would empower ISIS. The operation left President Trump vulnerable to criticism that he had given a green light for the assault, raising doubts about how the U.S. treats partners, and sparking a war of words between Erdogan and French President Emmanuel Macron in the lead-up to the NATO meeting.
“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” Macron said last month. “You have no coordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making between the U.S. and its NATO allies. None. You have an uncoordinated aggressive action by another NATO ally, Turkey, in an area where our interests are at stake. There has been no NATO planning, nor any coordination. There hasn’t even been any NATO deconfliction.”
[Read: ‘Nasty’: Trump blasts Macron ‘brain dead’ comments as NATO meeting opens]
Erdogan took the comments personally. “I’m addressing Mr. Macron from Turkey and I will say it at NATO: You should check whether you are brain dead first,” he said last week.
The Syria dispute is only the most recent split between Turkey and the rest of NATO, following Erdogan’s decision to buy advanced Russian anti-aircraft missile systems. The purchase of the S-400 defenses prompted the U.S. to expel Turkey from the F-35 stealth fighter program, but Aybet maintained that it was essential for Turkish national security.
The Syria issue has widened into another controversy, as Turkey blocked a plan for how NATO would defend Poland in the event of an attack from Russia out of frustration with NATO’s refusal to denounce the Syrian Kurdish militias.
