TURKEY: No Ally to Nations

Why Is Turkey Still In NATO?

11-4-19, * -- NATO member and Turkey’s President Erdogan has repeatedly attacked the Kurds in Syria, who — whatever reservations some may have about them – have been US allies against ISIS. Clearly Turkey has not. A short list of Erdogan’s unfriendly behaviors:

• He has carried on a campaign of vilification against the United States for refusing to hand over Fethulleh Gulen to Erdogan’s “justice.”
• He has discharged tens of thousands of people – judges, lawyers, professors, civil servants, military officers – whom he wildly accused of being part of the failed coup in July 2016.
• Turkey continues to jail more journalists than any other country on earth.
• Erdogan has bought Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile defense system, which U.S. and NATO officials fear would lead to security breaches (for the Russians could test how the S-400 performed against NATO missiles supplied by Turkey, and tweak their defense system accordingly).
• He kept the American pastor Andrew Brunson imprisoned for two years, after a Turkish court absurdly convicted the pastor of the Izmir Resurrection Church, a tiny congregation with 25 members — and gave him a 20-year prison sentence on assorted trumped-up charges, including that of being a C.I.A. spy and a member of the Kurdish “terrorist” group, the PKK, and worst of all, of being a “Gulenist” operative. Brunson was finally freed, most begrudgingly, and only after terrific American economic pressure (threats of more boycotts and tariffs) on Ankara. Erdogan’s plan was apparently to trade Brunson for Gulen; the Americans would have none of it.
• Erdogan has called the Germans “Nazis” for refusing to allow his men to campaign for votes from Turks living in Germany.
• When Austria shut down some Turkish-funded mosques, this led him to predict a coming war “between the crescent and the cross,” leaving no doubt as to which side Turkey would be on.
• Called for a gigantic pan-Islamic force to be created that could make war on, and presumably destroy, Israel. In Erdogan’s view, all 57 members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation [O.I.C.] would contribute, with Turkey taking the leading role. The plan was put forth in an article published by Erdogan’s most loyal mouthpiece, the newspaper Yeni Safak. The very detailed article included this:
  • What If An Army Of Islam Was Formed Against Israel? If the OIC member states unite and form a joint military force, it will be the largest army in the world. These countries’ total population is 1,674,526,931. The number of soldiers in active service in these countries is at least 5,206,100. Their [overall] military defense budget, of $174,728,420,000 is also worthy of emphasis.

As for Israel, it is significantly inferior; population is 8,049,314. Population of the city of Istanbul alone exceeds 14 million. The number of soldiers in active service in the [Israeli] occupation forces is 160,000, and [Israel’s] defense budget is approximately $15,600,000,000.

There is overwhelming superiority of the 57 Muslim states [coalition?] to Israel in their populations, in the numbers of their soldiers, in their defense budgets, and in their combined weaponry. Among the decisions that can be taken at the OIC [summit] is to form a ‘Jerusalem Task Group.’ If an Islamic army is formed, Israel will be under a siege involving 250,000 soldiers, and the establishment of joint land, air and naval bases for use in the short term. This task force would include: 500 tanks and armored vehicles, 100 war planes, 500 attack helicopters and 50 warships and submarines can be mobilized. When this was published not a peep of objection from other NATO members – clearly stated Islam coalition intends to destroy the Jewish State of Israel.
​
Yet Turkey remains a member of NATO, in apparent good standing. Of what conceivable benefit, militarily, is Turkish membership in NATO to its other members?

• In 2003 Turkey prevented the Americans from using the Incirlik air base to invade Iraq from the north
• In 2010 Erdogan claimed that Israel is “the principal threat to peace” in the Middle East. Not al-Qaeda, not the Islamic State, not Hezbollah, not Hamas, not Islamic Jihad, not the Muslim Brotherhood, but Israel, that has been fighting only defensive wars imposed on it by Arab states and terrorist groups ever since 1948.

• In 2016 Incrilik was locked down and power cut by Turkey during the coup attempt
• Turkey threatens to “kick out the American troops from two critical military bases in Incirlik and Malatya.” The Turkish journalist Burak Bekdil notes that “The US nuclear warheads at Incirlik have remained at the disposition of the US military under a special US-Turkish treaty. The early warning radars stationed at the Malatya base, which are linked to the US Aegis system (deployed in the Mediterranean), provide a shield for Israel against any air or missile attack.” But that is all the more reason for Erdogan to want to close down the Malatya base, and shut off those radars.
• How likely is it that Turkey would allow its airspace or bases on its soil to be used by NATO forces should there be action against Iran or contribute troops to a coalition of NATO military forces?
• President Erdogan and his senior officials have repeatedly threatened Europe that unless it does Turkey’s bidding – and stops criticizing its policies (including sending troops into Syrian Kurdish areas), “We will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way.”
• Turkey has never been interested in fighting ISIS. It was no secret that Turkey allowed ISIS fighters to cross freely into Syria from Turkey, no doubt because it preferred ISIS to the Syrian Kurds ISIS was fighting. And Turkey allowed wounded ISIS members to be treated at Turkish hospitals and then, instead of detaining them, let them return to the Islamic State.

---

And now we come to the killing of ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi. President Trump thanked Turkey for its assistance; it came second on his list, just after Russia, and the Kurds came last. But Turkey — like Russia — did nothing to help the Americans. One report said, lamely, that possibly Turkey’s contribution may have been to let the Americans fly over its territory. But if one looks at the flight plan of the planes coming from a base near Erbil, Iraq, they at no point flew over Turkish air space. There seems to have been absolutely no contribution by Turkey to the locating and killing of Al-Baghdadi. In fact, as Brett McGurk, who had been the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, Turkey has “a lot of explaining to do.” How is it that Baghdadi managed to hide out just a few kilometers from the Turkish border, an area bristling with Turkish military outposts and troops? It strains credulity to believe that the Turks did not know where Al-Baghdadi was. It was the Syrian Kurds, Turkey’s enemies, who tracked Al-Baghdadi for months to his final lair. They ought to have been thanked first, not last, by President Trump. And Turkey need not have been thanked at all.
As the veteran Middle East correspondent Trudy Rubin has noted:

Baghdadi was found, not in ISIS’s traditional area of eastern Turkey, but far away in western Syria, near the Turkish border and Turkish military outposts. This suggests that Turkish military intelligence knew Baghdadi’s location and didn’t share it.
Shouldn’t all this matter?

All this bespeaks THAT TURKEY IS NOT AN ALLY – much less a NATO ally that deserves our protection – but an enemy.

​Why is Turkey still in NATO?

*Excerpted and adapted full original report fro Hugh Fitzgerald, Jihad Watch - ​More here