The Turks are nothing if not fighters. Ottoman invaders laid siege to Malta in 1565, but were repulsed. They got as far as Vienna in 1683 to the terror of Christian Europe, and again they were defeated. Fast forward over two centuries to Gallipoli in 1915-16, where the Turks overcame a huge Allied landing; one of their commanders was Kemal Ataturk, the father of republican Turkey. Move on again to the Korean War where, in four battles in 1950, 5,000 Turkish troops took on Chinese forces three times their size and won.
Turkey joined Nato in 1952, acting as the southern bulwark against the Soviet Union and providing a Western but Muslim redoubt in the Middle East. But in the last three years, that relationship has deteriorated to the point where some are demanding Turkey’s expulsion from Nato, with the inevitable question of who lost Turkey sure to follow.
In an effort to repair bridges, US President Donald Trump recently hosted President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the authoritarian leader of Turkey, in Washington despite a bipartisan group of congressional leaders demanding the invitation be rescinded because of the Turkish attack on America’s Kurdish allies in northern Syria.
Congress had also demanded action over Erdoğan’s close relations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and a festering crisis caused by Turkey’s $2.5 billion purchase of four batteries of Russia’s S-400 air defence system – an act which flew in the face of Nato policy against members acquiring Russian military hardware.
Following his meeting with Erdoğan, Trump claimed that a ceasefire in northern Syria, partly negotiated by Vice-President Mike Pence, was holding and he would therefore drop the idea of imposing sanctions against Turkey. He added he was also intending to expand trade with Turkey.
The United States and the West cannot afford to lose Turkey. The most pressing issue is to halt its drift away from Nato into the arms of Moscow. Events in Syria and the purchase of Russian arms pose questions about Turkey’s reliability as an ally just at the time when its outstanding value as the pathway to the Middle East and Asia – and the most strategically located country in the alliance – has become even more crucial.
So far, President Trump has ignored congressional clamour to retaliate by expelling Turkey from Nato or to impose sanctions. As Erdoğan’s visit has shown, Trump enjoys good relations with the austere Turkish strongman and is prepared to go along with his recent actions.
Historically, close ties between American and Turkish military forces were soured in 2003 when Erdoğan prevented the US using Turkey to invade Iraq. Moreover, Erdoğan remains suspicious that the US was involved in the failed 2016 coup against him – suspicions fostered by Russian intelligence and seemingly confirmed by Washington’s refusal to extradite the coup’s alleged figurehead, the cleric Fethullah Guden. The F-16s of rebel Turkish airmen that stalked Erdogan’s jet and strafed the Parliament during the attempted coup took off from Incirlik airfield, which has a heavy US presence.
For Erdoğan the coup was a defining moment, which is why he cracked down ruthlessly on free speech. One hundred and fifty thousand civil servants lost their jobs and 77,000 people, including journalists and politicians, are in prison. While today Trump may have abandoned the Syrian Kurds, the US military feels honour-bound to ensure that Turkey, Russia and Syria do not expel these former allies from the Turkish border areas where Erdogan is determined to remove them.
The most pressing issue is to halt its [Turkey’s] drift away from Nato into the arms of Moscow
Perhaps over-confidently, the West imagines that Turkey’s dismal economic situation, and signs that Erdoğan’s electoral popularity is waning, will mean that it will return to the western fold. After all, some western neo-conservatives think they have a substitute ally waiting on the sidelines, namely a new axis of Greece, Cyprus and Israel interlinked by East Mediterranean natural gas – though so far without a pipeline to bring it to Europe.
Erdoğan, they say, will just have to live with the customary western approach of blowing hot on Nato and cold on human rights. Or, in Europe’s case, of dangling Turkish membership of the European Union while populists drone on about 80 million Turks swamping Europe.
But all this tends to underestimate what Russia and China are plotting with Turkey. Russia would love to prise Turkey out of Nato, which is why it swallowed the Turkish shooting down of a Russian fighter jet in 2015 and the assassination of its ambassador to Ankara a year later. Turkey has also become a key player in the Syrian peace process, along with Russia and Iran, since Bashar al-Assad of Syria won the civil war.
Russia senses waning US interest in the Middle East – Israel and Saudi Arabia excepted – and an opportunity to restore its influence, while selling armaments that have been successfully tested In the Syrian bloodbath. Can the US afford to punish the likes of Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia if they follow Turkey in buying Russian weapons?
China is no less interested in Turkey. During his visit to Beijing earlier this year, Erdoğan sought to establish his country at the heart of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative. He spoke of a land corridor through Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan that will link China to Europe.
The prospect of Chinese inward investment, which Turkey needs, ensured that Erdoğan made a revealing key declaration: “The people of the Xinjiang region [of China]” he said “live happily thanks to China’s development and prosperity”. It is quite something when a Muslim Turkish president is less concerned about the plight of threatened Uighur Muslims in China than the US Secretary of State. Turkish media now depicts the 30,000 Uighurs living in exile in Turkey as CIA stooges.
While it is too early to say if Turkey has been lost to the West, this is clearly more than a passing rocky patch in a long marriage. Whether China comes up with the investments it is promising, or Russia proves more than a fair-weather friend, remains to be seen.
But both the EU and the US should think very carefully before they ‘lose’ Turkey in a fit of pique about a few missiles which Erdoğan has partly acquired to ensure no members of his own air force try to overthrow him again.