Despite persistent disagreements, notably around Turkey, NATO members adopted a joint declaration on Wednesday, 4 December, after several days of tense talks in London. The day before, a series of passes between Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron and Recep Tayyip Erdogan has aggravated the discord within the Alliance, weakening it against the rise of Russia and China.
The recent statements by the French president that the Alliance was born in 1949 in a state of "brain death" and rising tensions with the Turkish president about his intervention in Syria have electrified the exchanges in the hours preceding the beginning of the commemorations in London. the 70th anniversary of NATO.
And even at the end of this statement, the dissensions remain: Ankara has announced a military cooperation agreement with Libya, provoking the anger of Greece, which sees a violation of its maritime areas and asks for support from the NATO ... How to understand Turkey's positions and what is its future in NATO? France 24 spoke with Yves Boyer, associate researcher at the NATO Strategic Research Foundation (FRS).
France 24: During these meetings between NATO leaders, grievances against Turkey have multiplied, especially concerning the offensive in Syria against the Kurds. How was Turkey able to launch its offensive without the backing of its NATO allies?
Yves Boyer: On the side of Erdogan, the Kurdish affair [the Kurds of Syria were supported by the United States in their fight against the Islamic State organization] and the fact that its opponent Fethullah Gülen was able to refugees in the United States have poisoned the situation. He considered that since the Syrian affair was more or less settled, he could give himself room for maneuver by creating a buffer zone between the Kurdish regions of Syria and Turkey. And so he launched his offensive, and I think he did it with the agreement of the United States. An offensive is getting ready, it shows. The French were aware that the Turkish army had massed some of its forces along the border with Syria. On the United States side, we knew and gave a blank check to Erdogan.
Faced with this, NATO can do nothing. Turkey is a sovereign country, NATO is an alliance, it is not a political entity, unlike the European Union. Each state remains free from its choices. NATO was not going to add more by openly condemning Turkey, which, moreover, flirts a little with the Russians.
NATO can not oppose Erdogan's decision to impose this buffer zone on the Kurds. And this, even if it poses a serious problem, because some of the Kurds are our allies and Emmanuel Macron was right to point out, this highlights a form of duplicity of the Turks.
Turkey claims that it is a member of the Atlantic Alliance, that it is a strong partner, and at the same time it finds a form of pantouranism, that is to say that it finds the aspirations of the Empire Ottoman [ancestor of Turkey, Editor's note] who also looks East, towards Central Asia and seeks to restore closer ties with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin will thus be received in Turkey at the beginning of January, and Ankara has bought anti-aircraft S-400 missiles from Russia.
New sources of tension are emerging: Turkey has announced a cooperation agreement with Libya against the opinion of Greece ...
For years, Turkey has blocked a number of decisions within NATO. It's not new. She has long played an extremely disturbing role. As far as the cooperation agreement with Libya is concerned, it is the world we are headed to: we find traditional history. The Ottoman power regains its historical pre-square and seeks to impose itself in an area, which has always been a zone of Turkish influence. This is not the end of history, it is the return of history.
We are witnessing the return of the powers on the international scene. The French and the Europeans have a hard time getting this back because they are very busy with multilateralism and the European dynamic. But states that are not in this dynamic are in a national game and regain their geopolitical characteristics based on history. So we are seeing Turkey as a form of neo-Pantouranism, a return of the Ottoman Empire in a different form.
In this context of tension, is it possible for Turkey to leave NATO?
Turkey will not leave NATO. Turkish leaders reaffirm that it is a good alliance, in this new geopolitical context of return of the powers. Why would Turkey leave an alliance that provides interesting benefits? From a military point of view, it is a kind of acquired protection. His military can gain positions of influence within the NATO command. The Turkish army can benefit from NATO's modern and useful planning and conducting methods, largely by the United States. From a military and geopolitical point of view, Turkey has no reason to abandon NATO.
All member states of the Atlantic Alliance have an interest in remaining in this structure, regardless of its imperfections. The United States because it's a way of controlling European security and weighing on its partners, the small eastern states because they are banking on the protection of the United States, which gives them room to maneuver and a certain respite. I do not see why we would break the house, it is useful. It's like mountain refuge, we do not go there often, but we can need it so we will maintain it and preserve it.
And on the Alliance side, what is the point of keeping Turkey in NATO?
Turkey's place in NATO is important, first in terms of population, because with more than 82 million people, it is one of the most populous countries in the Alliance, after the United States and almost equal with Germany.It is also a country that controls the straits, which is the guarantor of the Montreux Convention [signed in 1936, it allows free movement in the straits of Dardanelles and Bosphorus , as well as in the Black Sea, Ed]. It is a state inheritor of the Ottoman Empire, so its influence in Central Asia is also interesting at a time when there is the whole issue of China that arises. It is also a country through which a certain number of military means, in particular American ones, may pass, which could have to intervene in Central Asia and the southern flank of Russia. This country therefore has a very important geostrategic interest.