Turkey recently made international headlines after its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was elected to serve a third term as president of Turkey. Turkey is an important country – it sits at a crossroads between Europe, the Middle East, and the Caucasus region. It has a population of 85 million, making it the 18th-most populous country. Furthermore, it has the second-largest military in NATO (after the United States), and its strategically located Incirlik Air Base has been used by the U.S. Air Force to launch air raids against ISIS and other targets in the Middle East.
However, Turkey’s situation is becoming increasingly concerning. Although many analysts had concerns in the years leading up to this event, the 2016 failed coup attempt is often cited as the beginning of Turkey’s democratic backsliding. The coup attempt itself was not the main concern – those who rebelled cited the degradation of democracy and secularism as their chief concerns, based on Erdogan’s recent attempts to promote Islam in contrast to his earlier secular rhetoric.
Many of the coup plotters were inspired by the works of Turkish-born American Fethullah Gülen, a liberal Islamic scholar, activist and panethnicist (although some of the coup participants’ actions later prompted the United Kingdom to designate the Gülen Movement as a terrorist organization). The primary issue was in the response to the coup attempt – many individuals were arrested beyond the soldiers who participated in the coup itself. A massive number of judges and other individuals, as well as a few U.S. military contacts, were arrested, and thousands of educators had their licenses revoked. The effects of the crackdown were extending far beyond the military into influential parts of society.
The changes did not stop in the immediate aftermath. In 2017, Turkish voters approved a series of amendments to the Turkish constitution that transitioned Turkey from a democratic parliamentary system into a presidential system which, although still technically democratic, had a disproportionate amount of power centralized around the president. The move eliminated the position of prime minister and gave the executive more power over judicial appointments, among other changes. Additionally, Turkey’s electoral council, in an unprecedented move denounced by multiple international organizations, allowed unstamped ballots to be counted.
Perhaps the most alarming trend in Erdogan’s Turkey, from an American perspective, is its growing relationship with Russia. It could be considered mind-boggling that Erdogan went from stating that Turkey had a right to defend itself, in response to the 2015 downing of a Russian fighter jet that flew over Turkish territory, to saying that Turkey has “a positive relationship with Russia – Russia and Turkey need each other in every field possible.”
It is for these reasons that NATO should conduct an unprecedented move – kick out one of its member states. Although the procedure for such a move is unclear, it provides more reason to accelerate the process and either find out or create first steps.
To those who say Turkey is too vital of a NATO member considering our involvement in the Middle East, I have four counterpoints. One, they are holding up the accession of Sweden as a member of NATO, a country whose politics and military are much more compatible with NATO’s standard. Two, the number of assets and bases we will need in the Middle East will decrease as we look to get less involved in the conflicts of the Middle East (especially since Biden’s National Security Strategy emphasizes countering China as a focus). Three, their actions against Kurdish militias operating in Syria have quite frequently run counter to American interests, especially considering how Kurdish forces like the YPG are the greatest non-state ally the United States had in the Global War on Terror. Four, the dissonance Erdogan creates in the otherwise perfect picture of a unified NATO responding to the Russo-Ukrainian War can be viewed as weakness, which may encourage American adversaries to move against more of our allies in the future.