Fasten your seatbelts for more trouble with Turkey in 2020.
In the last 12 months, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has:
— Launched a unilateral military offensive into northeast Syria against Kurdish forces allied with the West to counter ISIS;
— Threatened to send millions of Syrian refugees to Europe if the European Union objects to his plan to resettle them in a buffer zone inside Syria;
— Begun installing Russian air defense missiles in defiance of NATO partners and the United States, prompting Washington to shut Turkey out of the F-35 advance fighter program;
— Shipped arms to Libya in breach of a U.N. embargo and offered to send troops to support the embattled government in Tripoli;
— Agreed with Libya on new sea borders in the eastern Mediterranean, claiming waters that Greece and Cyprus consider their own;
— Threatened to veto NATO defense plans for the Baltic states and Poland unless the alliance branded Syrian Kurdish forces “terrorists,” before backing down at the NATO summit in London in early December;
— Stepped up drilling for gas, guarded by Turkish warships, in Cyprus' exclusive economic zone;
— and intercepted an Israeli research vessel and forced it to leave Cypriot waters.
Erdoğan’s confrontation course has left officials in Brussels and Washington wondering just how far he might take strategic estrangement from the West and rapprochement with Russia.
“The Kremlin is openly using Turkey as a crowbar to divide NATO from inside” — Marc Pierini, former EU ambassador to Turkey
The religious nationalist leader is steadily reversing Ankara’s Western orientation that began almost a century ago under Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern, secular Turkish Republic. That direction was anchored after World War II by the country’s membership of the Council of Europe and NATO and its candidacy to join the European Union.
Some fear Erdoğan could withdraw from NATO’s military command in a gesture of nationalist grandeur, as France did in 1966 under General Charles de Gaulle, and perhaps even expel Western forces from Turkish soil. NATO has its land forces command and a forward base for its airborne warning, surveillance and control (AWACS) planes in Turkey.
With the U.S. Congress pressing President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on Turkey for buying Russian military equipment, Washington has strengthened military ties with Athens. Under a defense cooperation agreement signed in October, the U.S. gained the use of three strategic air bases in mainland Greece and upgraded naval facilities at Suda Bay in Crete, in what looks like a fallback in case it is denied use of the İncirlik base in southern Turkey that is vital for its operations in the Middle East.
Other diplomats think Erdoğan may keep Turkey in the Atlantic alliance but act increasingly as a Trojan Horse, obstructing decision-making that requires a consensus. In addition to its attempt to take the updated Baltic defense plans hostage, Ankara frequently gums up NATO exercise-planning over its air and sea space disputes with Greece.
“The Kremlin is openly using Turkey as a crowbar to divide NATO from inside,” said Marc Pierini, a former EU ambassador to Turkey now at the Carnegie Europe think tank.
Some diplomats and military analysts worry that Erdoğan may provoke an armed incident with Greece or its political adversary France in disputed air or sea space to rally nationalist support at home.
The French navy regularly patrols the east Mediterranean off Syria and Lebanon, where it has historic interests. France and Italy have sent warships into Cypriot waters recently, with port visits to Larnaca, to uphold freedom of navigation in Cyprus’ exclusive economic zone, where the French and Italian oil companies, Total and ENI, hold exploration licenses.
This has raised tensions between Erdoğan and French President Emmanuel Macron, the most vocal critic of Turkey’s incursion into northeastern Syria. The Turkish navy will take delivery of its first helicopter carrier and amphibious assault ship next year, giving it power projection capability across the Mediterranean region.
When I asked a Western admiral serving in the Mediterranean what kept him awake at night, the risk of an escalating maritime incident with Turkey off Cyprus was near the top of his list, second only to fear of a jihadist massacre on a cruise liner.
As Erdoğan’s domestic position has weakened with big-name defections from his Justice and Development Party (AKP) and a bumpy end to Turkey’s long economic boom, the authoritarian president has resorted increasingly to military and rhetorical muscle-flexing.
Since he returned empty-handed from the December NATO summit, the Turkish president has upped the ante on two fronts, offering to send troops to Libya to combat rebels backed by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia, and deploying drones to Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus to support drilling activities the EU has branded illegal. On December 26, Erdoğan said that parliament would vote in January on sending troops to Libya after the government in Tripoli requested it.
From Ankara’s viewpoint, these actions are legitimate responses to its Western allies’ unwillingness to acknowledge the danger to its security posed by Syrian Kurdish fighters allied with the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Erdoğan, left, with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia | Pool photo by Sergei Chirikov/AFP via Getty Images
“We do not question the validity of Article V,” Gülnur Aybet, a senior adviser to Erdoğan, told a security conference in London in early December, referring to NATO’s mutual defense clause. “On the contrary, a NATO that was fit for purpose would recognize this existential threat to Turkey.”
Ankara is also furious about U.S.-backed collaboration among Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt to exploit east Mediterranean gas reserves while shutting Turkey out.
Aybet played down Ankara’s growing ties with Moscow as “a largely pragmatic, compartmentalized relationship where we cooperate where we can and leave areas of dispute outside the door.”
Turkey’s official line is that it bought the S-400 top-of-the-range Russian air defense missile system after the U.S. refused to sell it Patriot missiles and European countries also refused to transfer advanced missile defense technology. Western officials say the S-400 is not only incompatible with NATO’s integrated air defense system but its sophisticated target acquisition radar, staffed by Russian technicians, could be used to spy on Western air forces throughout the region.
There is no mechanism for expelling an errant NATO member. The alliance in the past turned a blind eye to military regimes in Greece and Turkey. But diplomats say pragmatic ways would be found to work around Ankara if it cannot be persuaded to mothball the Russian air defense system.
A more potent check on Turkish disruption, at least in the short term, could be Erdoğan’s own ambitions.
On the political front, the EU could in theory pull the plug on Turkey’s accession negotiations, which are going nowhere given Erdoğan’s assault on judicial independence, media freedom and civil rights since he survived a failed 2016 military coup. But to do so would risk triggering another refugee influx into Europe and do severe damage to an economic relationship important for both sides. Germany would strongly oppose any such move.
A more potent check on Turkish disruption, at least in the short term, could be Erdoğan’s own ambitions.
The Turkish leader needs to maintain a regular flow of foreign investment to steady the economy and reassure the urban middle class that his first decade of prosperity helped to swell.
His political dream is to crown two decades of AKP rule by refounding the Turkish Republic as the new Atatürk on the 100th anniversary of its creation in 2023.
That gives Western officials reason to hope that Erdoğan will hold off escalating his confrontations to the point of crisis. For now, anyway.
