NATO Must Stand Up to Turkey’s Blackmail

A recent article by Halil Karaveli in Foreign Policy rightly points out that Turkey’s attempt at blackmail over Sweden’s accession to NATO is ultimately about extracting concessions from the United States. However, we disagree that “for Sweden to join NATO, the United States will have to cease financing and arming the PYD and YPG in Syria.” Turkey is overplaying its hand.

Given its position as the final holdout on Sweden’s and Finland’s accession to NATO, Turkey understandably wishes to push its advantage as long as NATO doesn’t push back. As Karaveli clearly explains, it would be unsafe and unwise to wager that Ankara’s position will soften after Turkey’s general elections in May.

NATO members’ efforts to ignore the issue for the sake of avoiding divisions among allies are pointless. It is time for NATO’s leadership and members to seriously engage Turkey on its disruptive and coercive behavior within the alliance, starting with holding Turkey to the agreement it made last June in Madrid with Sweden and Finland. This will require some political courage, including from key European capitals, in order to show broad agreement across NATO and present Turkey with a united front.

Turkey’s legitimate security concerns in Syria should be seriously addressed. However, this should be done through a separate track and in a way that also considers other NATO allies’ core security interests in the region. Turkey’s effort to link its agenda in northern Syria to NATO has undermined the alliance’s ability to focus on the greatest collective security challenge since World War II: Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Before the last NATO summit in Madrid, Erdogan decided to raise the price of his country’s blessing by pressuring Finland and especially Sweden over a laundry list of issues, including their alleged assistance to Kurdish groups, refugees, and asylum-seekers that Ankara labels as terrorists.

Following dramatic on-site trilateral negotiations in Madrid in June 2022, the two applicants agreed to a number of concessions, including over Turkey’s concerns about restrictions on arms exports, extradition, and counterterrorism cooperation, unlocking the approval of Finland’s and Sweden’s bids for membership by the 30 heads of states and government.

Turkey has a mixed record as a stabilizing force for NATO’s neighborhood.

Six months later, the ratification process remains frozen. In the interim, Finland and Sweden have offered more concessions in an effort to soften Ankara’s stance, without receiving any assurances of progress in return. At this stage, there is a possibility that the next NATO summit in Vilnius this July could be held without Sweden and Finland, which would mark a very high-profile political failure for the alliance in its first summit held in Lithuania.

Turkey’s gambit over NATO enlargement is only the most recent such issue within the alliance. Under Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule, Turkey has enacted a number of policies that are problematic for NATO and arguably contrary to the values and strategic interests of the alliance.

Turkey has a mixed record as a stabilizing force for NATO’s neighborhood. In the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey is pursuing controversial (and illegal) drilling activities, has signed an energy accord with Libya, and employs aggressive rhetoric and displays of force toward Greece, a fellow NATO ally. In the South Caucasus, Turkey’s enthusiastic support for Azerbaijan’s claims over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region and Baku’s offensive operations against Armenia, makes the prospects of lasting settlement of that conflict even more remote.

Turkey remains the main shelter for Syrian refugees fleeing the atrocities of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But Ankara keeps acting unilaterally against Kurdish groups in northern Syria and northern Iraq that it sees as hostile to Turkish security interests. Although Turkey has legitimate security concerns regarding leaders of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) with historical and ideological ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdish fighters are the backbone of a larger local security organization, the Syrian Democratic Forces, which led the fight against the Islamic State and remains the most capable local partner for the global coalition to defeat the terrorist group. Turkey’s aggressive actions against these Kurdish fighters could have dramatic security consequences. In fact, Turkey’s past offensive operations in Syria reportedly enabled the escape of Islamic State militants and their families.

On NATO’s most pressing issue, Russia’s war in Ukraine, Turkey has attempted to strike a balance between supporting Ukraine and maintaining a constructive relationship with Russia. On the one hand, Turkish-supplied Bayraktar TB2 drones have proved invaluable to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As a custodian of the Black Sea straits, Turkey has a pivotal role in controlling access and facilitating grains shipments. Turkey also hosted the first mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine for a peace settlement.

On the other hand, Turkey has deepened its cooperation with Russia and has established itself as a hub for sanctions evasion. Turkey has an ambiguous relationship with Russia. This is perhaps best exemplified by Turkey’s 2017 agreement to purchase the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system and by the transactional yet close relations between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the two leaders deconflict their interests and objectives while keeping Western powers at bay. Turkish defense officials have recently held direct talks with Syrian defense officials, hosted by Moscow, in part to discuss Turkey’s hostility to the YPG/YPJ. If Ankara receives guarantees from Damascus, Erdogan could even hold a meeting with Assad—something the Turkish president has already publicly said is “possible.”

There are good reasons to avoid antagonizing Turkey. Its presence in NATO since 1952 is by itself a key strategic asset. As a majority-Muslim Eurasian power, Turkey’s membership has always been a source of pride for NATO, both during the Cold War and today. Despite a political purge affecting the military in 2016, Turkey also boasts a strong and capable army, NATO’s second largest in terms of personnel. NATO has used the Incirlik and Konya air bases for some of its military operations in the region, and Turkey was one of the main contributors to NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, the largest and longest operation the alliance has undertaken.

There is, therefore, a tacit understanding within NATO that Turkey is a special case, and although it is an unpredictable ally, it is “better to have Turkey in than out.” As such, Turkey holds unique strategic and cultural value for the alliance, and NATO and the United States remain heavily invested in maintaining positive relations with Ankara.

However, fears that honest criticism of Turkey would risk causing a “Turxit” from NATO are largely misconceived.

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First, Turkey would have nothing to gain from leaving NATO and plenty to lose. Turkey is surrounded by other aspiring regional powers and competing revisionist former empires hostile to its interests. Membership in the strongest military alliance in the world, with the full benefit of its collective defense guarantee, is a vital strategic asset for Turkey. NATO is key to Turkey’s leverage in its transactional relations with most of its partners and rivals, chiefly Russia.

Second, NATO’s silence signals its consent. Turkey has a long track record of blackmailing or threatening NATO allies at almost no cost, if not to its benefit. This history includes NATO granting Turkey the Allied Land Command in Izmir in order to overcome a Turkish blockade over the alliance’s new defense posture at the 2010 Lisbon summit and Turkey obstructing defense plans to the benefit of Poland and Baltic states in a (failed) attempt to have the PYD/YPG listed as a terrorist organization in 2020. Turkey has no reason to stop such tactics until it feels that other allies’ patience has been exhausted.

NATO members should accept the reality of the present standoff and push back on Turkey’s illegitimate or excessive demands.

Giving in to Ankara’s excessive demands also condones Turkey’s expansive definition of terrorism and poor track record with jihadi organizations. Ankara has been using counterterrorism as an expedient means of domestic political repression, with more than 2 million terrorism investigations launched after the failed 2016 coup.

Third, it is important to recognize that Erdogan’s approach to foreign policy is primarily transactional. NATO has also failed to adequately appreciate that it is part of a broader Turkish foreign-policy calculus in which its Euro-Atlantic relations are weighed alongside Turkey’s interests in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. NATO has thus acted on a faulty expectation that offering multiple carrots would induce Turkey to relinquish its stick (exercising coercive diplomatic leverage within the alliance). Understandably, Ankara has been quite content to eat all the carrots it is offered while keeping its stick firmly in hand.

As foreign as it is to their own negotiating styles, especially for recently neutral newcomers such as Sweden and Finland, other NATO members should accept the reality of the present standoff and push back on Turkey’s illegitimate or excessive demands.

NATO leaders must decide what they want to do. Either they continue to accept Turkish terms and hope that Ankara will be appeased or they accept that frank dialogue among allies is needed to redefine the terms of the equation.

This, in turn, raises the question of who should take the lead responsibility for engaging Ankara.

The Biden administration is unwilling to risk creating a fresh spat with the new Congress, for which the topic is potentially inflammatory, as seen in Turkey’s request for new F-16 fighter jets from Washington. Nor does Washington want to give excuses for Ankara to pursue its unilateral agenda in Syria, which may directly threaten U.S. military personnel still active in the country. Stronger U.S. involvement could therefore prove crucial, but other allies should stop expecting miracles from Washington.

Mediation by NATO’s secretary-general has proved helpful in the past but is unlikely to be conclusive in this case. U.S. President Joe Biden and current NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg should therefore ask European leaders to enter the fray to present Turkey with the greatest possible united front. Some European countries seem to have limited their thinking to further appeasing Turkey, rather than challenging its problematic behavior—with the exception of Greece and France, which have been extremely vocal. However, it’s important to recall that several NATO members have real influence with Ankara.

Britain is a very close partner of the two candidate countries and has deepened ties with Turkey these past few years; Italy is helped by its converging interests in Libya and by good atmospherics between Erdogan and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; Spain has close defense and industrial relations with Turkey; and Germany has important trade and people-to-people ties it could leverage. Coordinated action among these capitals could have an effect—or could at least send the signal to Washington, Helsinki, and Stockholm that they are trying to advance the cause of the alliance.

The aim should be to reverse the current diplomatic initiative and show Turkey what it stands to lose rather than what it stands to gain. Incentives and concessions should come as a reward, not as a starting point.

Simultaneously, the allies that still have important interests at stake in Syria should harness or create relevant venues for dialogue on Turkey’s legitimate concerns, in order to shift the terms of Ankara’s transactions away from NATO.

The goal of engaging Turkey on these issues should not be to question its value as an ally or to challenge its interests. Rather, the present moment calls for NATO leaders to demonstrate the values of the alliance and to set clearer expectations for how allies are expected to behave.