7/13/18
Sending America’s most advanced fighters to Ankara will do greater harm than good to U.S. interests — and that should give its allies pause. Though the original intention was to strengthen the military capacity of an important ally, the planned sale of 100 of the jets to Turkey will only strengthen an increasingly autocratic regime. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spent the two years since an attempted coup imprisoning tens of thousands of political opponents, muzzling the press, and expanding the scope of his own powers, culminating in his “reelection” and the elimination of any meaningful limits on how long he may retain his position. The European Union has already recognized the danger, hitting the brakes on talks about Turkey’s long-desired accession to the EU as Erdogan cracks down on political opponents. The United States and its other NATO allies should also be rethinking whether it makes sense for Turkey to remain a part of the alliance. Expelling Turkey from NATO is not a decision to be taken lightly. Not only has Turkey been an integral member of the alliance since joining in 1952, but given its location, analysts have long viewed Turkey as a strategically critical member of the NATO alliance. Turkey helps defend Europe’s southern flank and its bases have routinely provided the staging area for air strikes.
Given all this, many acknowledge Turkey’s recent troubles while arguing that the sale of 100 F-35s should go through. Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, opposes the effort by Sens. James Lankford, Jeanne Shaheen, and Thom Tillis to obstruct the sale, arguing that Turkey is a vital contributor to NATO and that the U.S. should not deny it security benefits. The reality, however, is that Turkey has already been moving closer to Russia while increasingly working at cross-purposes to NATO and the U.S. The most obvious evidence of this is in Syria. While the United States sees the Syrian Kurdish militias as an important ally in the fight against the Islamic State, Erdogan sees an existential threat to Turkish security. As a result, Ankara has been working with Moscow to fight the very rebels the United States has been backing. Turkey has also ordered a Russian missile defense system despite stern warnings from the State Department. Snce the Arab Spring, moreover, Turkey has given support to Islamist groups throughout the Middle East. In the end, an increasingly authoritarian and politically fragile ally that cozies up to Russia, works against the U.S. war on terror, and spreads extremist forms of Islam is not much of an ally. Turkey today certainly does not act like an ally that Americans would be willing to fight and die for as required by Article 5 of the NATO charter. And Turkey is certainly not an ally that deserves the highest level of access to advanced American weaponry.
It is fun to watch our European "allies" scrabble for the crumbs falling from his tables. Trade with Europe is for who's benefit? Don't you love those European principles?
