Don’t Let Turkey Hijack the NATO Summit

Excerpt

For the first time since 2004, Turkey will host the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7–8, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will likely use the event to present Turkey as a model ally. The messaging will be simple: Turkey is the indispensable nation, an image that Erdogan has long cultivated.

If left unchallenged, NATO leaders will miss the vital question of whether Erdogan’s government uses Turkey’s NATO membership to strengthen the alliance or to shield policies that undermine it.

Nowhere is the dilemma more apparent than in Ankara’s attempt to lead a new Sunni security framework with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and others, a potential sign that Turkey is interested in entering into alliance networks outside of NATO. We have already observed this in Turkey’s repeated bids to join BRICS and the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO)—entities that model themselves in opposition to the rules-based international order.

While Turkey frames the potential Sunni pact as an effort to promote regional stability amid Iran’s weakening, it risks forming a parallel security bloc that undermines NATO cohesion, complicates US strategy, and enables Ankara to pursue strategic independence rather than transatlantic priorities.

Sinan Ciddi is a senior fellow on Turkey at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington, DC.