The core of the U.S.-Turkey relationship has been Turkey’s participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the bedrock security structure upon which the United States and Europe have depended for almost 70 years. As President Trump highlighted during his campaign and in the first months of his presidency, many NATO members only nominally contribute to the organization and few meet their commitments. Historically, Turkey has been different. Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO, and has more men under arms or in the reserves than France, the United Kingdom, and Germany combined.
Alas, after 15 years of Recep Tayyip Erdogan at Turkey’s helm, the Turkish army has changed radically. Almost every officer up to lieutenant colonel arose under the Islamist leader. In addition, Erdogan’s manipulation of promotions with fake plots — Ergenekon, Balyoz, and perhaps even the 2016 abortive coup — allowed him to replace the top brass. Turkey’s top generals today are loyal to Erdogan first, and Turkey a distant second.
Erdogan has declared that his goal is to raise a religious generation, and the military, the traditional guardians of Turkey’s laicism, have not been immune.
Turkey is currently bogged down in Afrin, an area of Syria populated by and controlled by Kurds. While Turkey says the Kurds in Afrin are terrorists waging war against Turkey, neither the Turkish foreign ministry nor Turkey’s defense ministry have been able to identify a single instance of a terrorist attack perpetrated by Kurds from Afrin. In reality, Turkey seeks both to ethnically cleanse the strategic zone and privilege Islamists who oppose the largely secular Kurdish population. Consider this last will and testament from one of the Turkish soldiers who have died in Afrin: “Brother this war is between crescent and cross, it’s one of belief with denial, true faith with superstition, Tawhid with blasphemy.” And, here is another Turkish soldier making the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Rabia” hand signal. And Turkish exchange students in Imam Hatip schools (basically Turkish madrasas) while on Turkish government scholarships praise the Turkish military’s religious jihad in Syria.
Then there’s Adnan Tanriverdi, whom Erdogan appointed his military counselor after the 2016 coup attempt. Tanriverdi was the highest ranking military officer purged in the 1997 “soft coup” because of his Islamist leanings. Tanriverdi subsequently created SADAT, an Islamist private security contractor guilty of supplying Hamas, among other terrorist groups. Witnesses say SADAT snipers were also responsible for shooting civilians on the night of the failed coup, an outrage which Erdogan subsequently blamed on a network loyal to ally-turned-rival Fethullah Gulen, a Pennsylvania-based theologian. SADAT is quickly becoming Turkey’s equivalent of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, acting in conjunction with Turkey’s military, if not acting as its elite wing.
Other problems abound. Turkish threats against other NATO members, including the United States, are becoming too frequent to dismiss. Egemen Bagis, long among Erdogan’s most influential advisors, once threatened to use the Turkish Navy against U.S. shipping involved in gas exploration and extraction in Cypriot waters. In September 2011, for example, he declared: “This is what we have the navy for. We have trained our marines for this; we have equipped the navy for this. All options are on the table; anything can be done.” Turkey has compromised American security inside Syria by leaking to al Qaeda and other extremists the location of American forces and the equipment they had at their disposal.
Turkey’s recent dealings with Russia and China, both of which threaten to compromise U.S. and NATO secrets, are the icing on top. So too are its leaks to Iran.
So why not expel Turkey from NATO? Those who say Turkey is too important to turn away are kidding themselves. Maybe Turkey is transactional, but the fact that they would try to engage Washington and Moscow in a bidding war for their cooperation and affection is indication alone that Turkey cannot be trusted. And pining for decades past or assuming that those days might return is unrealistic. The most dishonest proponents of assuaging Erdogan are those who simply want to preserve their access to Turkey and prominent Turks.
The real problem is that NATO is a consensus-driven organization and so Turkey can be the figurative Trojan Horse, undercutting its operations from within. There is also no formal mechanism to expel a member. But that does not mean that NATO and its members cannot quarantine problems and pressure them. No NATO forces or facilities should remain inside Turkey; today’s forward deployment is tomorrow’s hostages. Nor should Turkey be a depot for nuclear missiles. To keep nuclear missiles in places where incited mobs of Turks might seek to access them is about as wise as keeping nuclear missiles in Pakistan, whose government and population are equally prone to radicalism. Turkey absolutely should have no part of the next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and they certainly should not have monopolies over any component or work. To cooperate in counterterrorism with Turkey is simply to hand over sensitive U.S. technology to not only Turkish industry, but also potentially to Russia, China, and Iran.
Diplomacy is about crafting an image, but attachment to that image should never trump substance or reality. Alas, the reality is that Turkey is a security risk, and its army is no longer an institution upon whom the U.S. can depend or ever should rely. Sadly, that’s not a temporary phenomenon — with Erdogan’s transformation of the Turkish military, it is now a generational problem.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
