...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
drill scandal in Norway has sparked a debate on
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
’s membership in the Transatlantic alliance, compounding the latent anti-Western and anti-American sentiment.
In retrospect, Turkey has always had a love-hate relationship with the West. Since the late Ottoman Empire, Western civilization has functioned both as a model for modernization and an object of cultural contempt due to its perceived moral decay. Western interference in the late Ottoman era, as well as the bitter experiences during Turkey’s War of Independence, solidified the idea that the West was a rival bloc that was eager to partition Turkey at the first opportunity. This suspicion toward the Western world ‐ also known as the Sèvres Syndrome ‐ has continued to haunt
Turkey is now experiencing one of those rare periods in which its relations with both Europe
...also known as Moslem Lebensraum...and the United States have reached a nadir. In the past, whenever there was tension with one, Turkey would move closer to the other so as to maintain balance and prevent a total rupture in ties with the West in line with a Westward-leaning foreign policy that has constituted one of the main pillars of
Today, that orientation is no longer a given. Particularly since the failed July 2016 coup attempt, the government has accused the West of engaging in a plot against Turkey to bring down President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey.... This perception has poisoned ties with the West and pushed Turkey to seek alternative partnerships. Truth be told, the oblivion of Westerners with regard to Turkey’s security concerns has not made life easier for the alliance either.
The West’s ambivalence on freedom and democracy, which amounts to safeguarding Gulenists
... the Turkish version of the Boogie Man, who set fire to the Turkish Reichsstag..., believed to have orchestrated the coup attempt, and outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members, has deeply undermined Turkey’s trust.
However,
women are made to be loved, not understood...
the government’s efforts to frame its crackdown on the press, academia and civil society as necessary to combat terror have failed to convince anyone beyond Turkey’s borders.
While
NATO is first and foremost a collective defense organization. Since the end of the Cold War, the body has been struggling to find a new mission, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 helped the Atlantic alliance in this regard. Moreover, the institution’s efficiency in confronting today’s complex threats is being queried. Still, Turkey’s NATO membership not only provides a security umbrella but also an anchor to the West. Questioning Turkey’s membership creates a security risk on the alliance’s eastern and southern flanks, while Turkey’s possible departure from NATO would disrupt Ankara’s Western identity as well.
The latest drill incident might have been cooked up by the Gulenists, as claimed by many. But what if the initial plan is to sever Turkey’s ties with the West before ‐ ominously ‐ isolating Turkey politically and economically?