Why NATO members — including the US — should not coddle Turkey

On the eve of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit of Russian President (and “dear friend”) Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg this week, the North American Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) went out of its way to appease the Turks.

Seeking to tamp down “speculative press reports regarding NATO's stance regarding the failed coup in Turkey and Turkey’s NATO membership” — and apparently timed to correspond with an apparent rapprochement between Turkey and NATO adversary Russia — NATO released a statement reaffirming its support for Turkey.

The statement reads in part:

If this statement baffles you in light of the Islamic supremacist Erdogan regime’s widespread support for jihadism and its authoritarian actions in the wake of the recent attempted coup, you are not alone.

On the Islamic supremacist front, Turkey’s efforts have ranged from actively aiding and abetting jihadist groups, to turning a blind eye to their operations and persecuting minorities. Consider that Erdogan’s regime has, among other things…

• • Backed Sunni jihadist opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, by facilitating the transfer of material support in terms of arms and money to al-Qaeda linked terrorist Jabhat al-Nusra, among other groups

• • Allegedly worked with ISIS, including, in effect, underwriting the jihadist group through the purchase of perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of oil — ISIS’ lifeblood

• • Failing to seal its borders — wittingly or unwittingly — from jihadists seeking to join ISIS and other Islamic supremacist movements, and effectively blackmailing the EU vis-à-vis Erdogan’s threat to keep open the spigot of refugees flowing from Turkey to EU member-states absent a multi-billion payment

• • Brutally attacking Turkey’s Kurdish minority

On the home front, in City Journal, longtime Turkey observer Claire Berlinski chronicles the extent to which Erdogan has moved to consolidate power and purge the nation of opponents, just in the past several weeks following the failed coup:

While, of course, outright treason must be punished, the extent of Erdogan’s purge, and the lengths to which he has gone to achieve it in complete contravention of NATO’s purported “principles of democracy, individual liberty, human rights and the rule of law,” is staggering.

Indeed by letter and spirit, as reflected in word and deed, Erdogan’s Turkey has been in direct non-conformance with NATO on the basis of the organization’s preamble alone — which reads:

Erdogan’s palling around with Putin notwithstanding, NATO may view Turkey as a bulwark against the Russians. But the actions of the Erdogan regime in support of jihadism abroad, and totalitarian Islamic supremacism at home, must not be ignored if NATO is to maintain any legitimacy.

Foreign policy is a constant changing battlefield in perpetual flux, whereby enemies in some situations are friends in others, and lesser adversaries at times must be worked with in order to counter great ones.

But the U.S., as the most powerful NATO member, must have moral clarity with respect to Turkey. Its turn away from Ataturk under Erdogan, and toward Islamic supremacism abroad and Islamic autocracy at home, is utterly antithetical to NATO’s mission and America’s national interest.

Unlike the Obama administration, which has counted the Turkish president among his best friends on the world stage, the next U.S. president ought to demand that Turkey cease all support for jihad and restore law and order — or face real consequences.