NATO summit: "Turkey expects support from its allies"

The atmosphere is at odds for the summit of 70 years of the Atlantic Alliance and it is especially between the French president and his Turkish counterpart that the atmosphere is the most electric. The dispute concerns the intervention launched by Ankara in northeastern Syria without informing the other members of NATO. And Erdogan intends to address this subject.

"Turkey expects support from its allies, it expects that its security concerns are recognized as legitimate and that its operation in Syria is recognized as an anti-terrorist operation, especially by its European partners", explains Ludovic de Foucaud, correspondent for France 24 in Turkey.

>> Read also: "NATO Summit: An Anniversary and Challenges"

On 9 October, the Turkish army entered the territories controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of Kurdish-dominated fighters who, allied to the Americans in the region since 2015, have paid a heavy price to the struggle against the Islamic State organization.

This is where the rub is: where Erdogan defends a security operation, the Europeans consider instead that this incursion may weaken the fight against terrorism and the Islamic State group in the region.

Erdogan ulcerated by Macron

"France was the noisiest against the unilateralism of the Turkish operation in Syria," says Ludovic de Foucaud. Hence exacerbated exasperation of the Turkish President vis-à-vis Emmanuel Macron. The charge of the Frenchman on the state of NATO ulcerated Recep Tayyip Erdogan who judged the French president himself "in a state of cerebral death".

"Turkey feels legitimate to criticize France because other countries - notably the United States and Germany - have done so after Emmanuel Macron's interview with The Economist," the journalist adds.

Angela Merkel had notably distanced herself from Emmanuel Macron by saying that she did not share her "radical" vision. For his part, US Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said he "strongly disagrees with President Macron's assessment of NATO". Emmanuel Macron assumes his remarks and does not intend to give up his grievances.