Erdoğan's Turkey: NATO's Trojan Horse Moment
by Burak Bekdil • February 3, 2023 at 5:00 am
In its Freedom in the World 2022 report, Freedom House, a U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., put Turkey in its "not free" category of countries, along with Afghanistan, Angola, Belarus, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and several other third world rogue regimes. Could one, by the criteria of democracy, imagine any of those countries as a NATO member state? But Turkey is.
Erdoğan needs NATO... He is tying NATO's planned Nordic expansion, to include Sweden and Finland, to his election campaign.
"If you can come up with a security problem, then people rally behind the strong leader." — Özer Sencar, chairman of the Turkish polling company, Metropoll.
Any unwisely public Turkish-Western confrontation in the few months before Turkey's elections will add to votes for Erdoğan. Most Turks still believe what they were taught at primary school: A Turk's only friend is another Turk. They are still living in a xenophobic unreal world where every other nation is an enemy of their land and is plotting against Turkey. That childish feeling, in a matter of collective psychology, coerces them to unite behind the leader. Trouble with the West, and Erdoğan wins again.
NATO is essentially a security alliance. Its preamble, however, states that the organization is founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. The grossly autocratic one-man show in Turkey, a NATO member, features none of that. According to the 2021 Democracy Index prepared by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Turkey ranks 103rd among 167 countries. The index evaluation was based on five criteria: electoral processes and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties.
