ANXIETIES about Donald Trump’s commitment to NATO and Russia’s military assertiveness remain at the top of the alliance’s agenda. But close behind looms the problem of semi-detached Turkey, a country that not only possesses NATO’s second-biggest armed force, but also straddles a critical geopolitical fault-line between west and east.
Turkey is not only unpredictable. It also pursues a nationalist agenda that can put it at odds with its obligations to allies. The most recent source of tension is the simmering row between Turkey and America over Turkey’s incursion into Afrin, a Kurdish enclave in north-west Syria. This is not, strictly speaking, a matter for NATO. However, American troops could soon find themselves under direct attack from their NATO ally if Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, carries out a promise to “strangle…before it is born” a 30,000-strong American-backed “border security force”, composed largely of YPG Kurdish fighters whom Turkey regards as...Continue reading
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