US President-elect Donald Trump, during his first presidential term, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pose for a group photo at a NATO summit in Britain, in 2019.(photo credit: YVES HERMAN/REUTERS)
Is Turkey still a reliable NATO ally under Erdogan’s Islamist and authoritarian rule?
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’s (FDD) Turkish expert Sinan Ciddi writes that under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “Ankara is not only distancing itself from the West, but consciously working to undermine its core security interests.”
Most Americans are unaware that NATO’s second-largest military is led by an authoritarian leader who follows the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-American Islamist ideology. Turkey (Turkiye) became the home of the Muslim Brotherhood after they were thrown out of Egypt in 2013.
The US State Department says, “Turkey is an important US security partner.” Yet, that same State Department is also highly critical of its human rights practices, “including arbitrary killings, torture, deaths in custody, forced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and continued detention of tens of thousands of persons.”
Erdogan has eliminated from his military, media, judiciary, and government the pro-American and secular voices and, for good measure, imprisoned more journalists than any other country in the world.
Shortly after the 2024 US election, Erdogan called President-elect Donald Trump and invited him to visit Turkey. Where a President goes for the first foreign visit of a new administration has a powerful symbolic meaning and often lays a path for the coming policy priorities. When president Obama chose to snub Israel when he visited the Middle East early in his term, it signaled a distancing from Israel as part of his intent to pursue a rapprochement with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
What the Trump team must remember
Obama was also mistaken about Turkey. According to the FDD’s Ciddi, “One must remember that when Barack Obama took office in 2009, he considered Turkey to be a ‘model’ country, representing the successful fusion of democratic governance and Islam.” Either Obama was blind to the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology, or he was sympathetic to political Islamism.
The incoming Trump team should remember, “Turkey provided aid, weapons shipments, and fighter transits to Al Qaeda-affiliated extremist organizations… and helped facilitate its bloody rampage… Erdogan’s patronage of Hamas has been instrumental in the organization’s international efforts to fundraise, recruit, and likely execute terror attacks inside of Israel – possibly even those that took place on October 7.”
President-elect Trump may be tempted to make a deal with Erdogan, who will try to charm the former and future president. Erdogan wants to replace Qatar as an intermediary with Hamas. The correct choice for our new president is to list both Qatar and Turkey as state sponsors of terror for their support of Hamas and Iran.
The president-elect’s foreign policy team of Rubio, Witkoff, Hegseth, Huckabee, Waltz, and Stefanik prioritizes American interests, backing our most essential friend in the Middle East, Israel. The Forward called his “first national security picks, die-hard Israel supporters.” UN Ambassador-elect Elise Stefanik said, “Israel is America’s most critical ally in the Middle East,” something that will irk the Muslim Brotherhood’s Erdogan.
Erdogan sees Israel as an enemy and has been supporting, defending, and giving sanctuary to Hamas, which has planned its terrorism from Turkish soil.
“No one can make us qualify Hamas as a terrorist organization. Turkey is a country that speaks openly with Hamas leaders and firmly backs them. Netanyahu and his administration, with their crimes against humanity in Gaza, are writing their names next to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, like today’s Nazis,” Erdogan said.
TRUMP’S CHOICE for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, champions stronger relations with Turkish adversaries, Greece and Cyprus. Rubio led a bipartisan initiative with 45 senators “condemning the human rights situation in Turkey” in 2021.
According to the Greek Reporter, “The Florida senator’s…nomination has already sparked concern in Ankara, particularly due to his past criticism of Turkey’s 2019 offensive in Syria, his opposition to Erdogan’s relationship with Maduro, and his characterization of Turkey’s government as authoritarian, alongside Russia, China, and Venezuela.”
The Washington Examiner states, “Rubio has been publicly critical of many of Erdogan’s policy positions and believes he is detrimental to and undermining US security interests.”
Both sides of the aisle see Turkey as a problem. During his confirmation hearings for secretary of state in 2021, Antony Blinken said, “Turkey is not acting like an ally. The idea that a so-called strategic partner of ours would actually be in line with one of our biggest strategic competitors in Russia is unacceptable.”
Mike Waltz, Trump’s selection for national security advisor, is another strong supporter of Israel as well as of the Iraqi Kurds. Erdogan not only has a visceral hatred of Israel, but his animosity extends to all Kurdish groups as supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. This militant group has been fighting for Kurdish rights in Turkey as a beleaguered minority for decades.
But it is the Syrian Kurds who are a particular target of Erdogan. He ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Kurds from northwest Syria, creating a Turkish-controlled region that is a Sunni Islamist enclave, undermining America’s Syrian Kurdish allies who were indispensable in defeating ISIS and who, at our behest, hold in custody thousands of ISIS members and their families.
So, what should the Trump administration demand of Turkey?
- End financing and giving sanctuary to Hamas.
- End the ethnic cleansing of the Syrian Kurds. If we abandon the Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces, which are indispensable in preventing the reemergence of ISIS, it could force US boots back on the ground. It will also signal to our allies worldwide that we are a fair-weather friend.
- Hand over the Russian S-400 system so we can learn how to make our F-35 fleet invulnerable to the “axis of aggressors” communications jams.
- Stop helping the Iranian economy as the Trump administration prepares to restart maximum pressure sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
- Revisit the Biden administration’s sale of F-16 fighters until Turkey aligns with our interests and acts like an ally and a member of NATO.
- For leverage, threaten the removal of the US Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, which is important but not indispensable.
According to the Cato Institute’s Jason Cohen, “US policymakers often operate under the assumption that sending more weapons to…strategic partners provides Washington leverage over the recipients. Yet, Turkey serves as the latest example that the opposite is true. In Turkey’s case, the weaker ally is dictating US policy.”
Mr. Trump, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. But remember, no matter how much Erdogan flatters you, he remains an American adversary trying to take advantage of you and our national security interests.
This article originally appeared in The Jerusalem Post on November 25, 2024.
The writer is the senior security editor for The Jerusalem Report, the director of MEPIN, the Middle East Political Information Network, and regularly briefs members of the US Congress and their foreign policy aides on the Middle East.