Turkish Catch 22: Erdogan Intolerable For NATO; Turkey Indispensable
Saeed Naqvi
What is the link between
Brexit and the failed coup in Turkey? They ring alarm bells for NATO in the
time of Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, Pablo Iglesias, Marine Le Pen and gathering anti
establishment storms elsewhere. The global right wing establishments are tearing
their hair. Donald Trump, Presidential candidate for the Republican Party, once
the torch bearer of American Exceptionalism, has broken from the past. America
has no right to lecture anyone, he told the New York Times. “We have to fix our
own mess.”
Formal disengagement of
Britain from Europe weakened the Atlantic Alliance in a way that Europe may, in
monuments of pressure, be amenable to Russian blandishments. This is anathema
to the Deep State in Washington, Trump or no Trump
All the hyperactivity of NATO
members recently in Warsaw had a supreme purpose: to firm up in the Alliance
what Donald Rumsfeld famously called New Europe. Old Europe, France and
Germany, have become too effete and independent minded. Also, no one knows what
continental Europe will look like after elections next year.
These must be desperate times.
In the short run, the only point the West can score over Putin is to blacken
the names of Russian athletes for “officially sponsored drug abuse” preparatory
to the Rio Olympics. And, wait for the American election results.
Into this chaotic cauldron,
toss in Erdogan, a key NATO member and his post coup tantrums.
But why is he throwing such a
ginger fit? After all, the post coup scenario could well be placing in his
hands power that dictators dream of. This causes some analysts to talk of a
“false flag”. The Turkish Sufi cleric exiled in the US, Fethullah Gulen, has
already made the allegation: the coup may have been staged to arrest Gulen and
his supporters. Indeed a list of thousands of teachers, doctors, lawyers,
judges cannot have been prepared overnight without extensive planning. But Ankara
blames Gulen for plotting the coup.
What is causing gripes in the
West after the failed coup is a general sense of relief in Moscow, Tehran,
Damascus and southern Lebanon (Hezbullah country). An inference is that the
coup’s success would have been welcomed by the West.
The rift between Erdogan and
Washington is now a yawning gap. There must be deep consternation in all NATO
countries at the continuance of a recalcitrant, increasingly Islamist Turkey in
the Alliance. Something must give – and soon.
A well connected Indian businessman
in Istanbul on the day of the coup, endorses a popular narrative. The coup
would have succeeded had the coup leader not set the cat among the pigeons. He
called on the forces to arrest all ISIS hands convalescing in hospitals or
wherever they can be located.
Versions coming out of Ankara
are something of a puzzle. These suggest that CIA interests in Turkey were
averse to ISIS being wiped out. Considering that a universal war on the ISIS
has supposedly been ordered by Washington, why this squeamishness about
destroying “all” ISIS targets in Turkey? It is just possible that the ISIS was
an amalgam of diverse components and that some of these components needed to be
preserved.
The other mistake the coup
leaders made was to call back Turkish troops from Iraq without intimating US
commanders who were on the drawing boards for an operation in Mosul after the
successful operation in Fallujah last month.
If the coup had proceeded on
track without harming US interests/assets, Erdogan’s goose was more or less
cooked. Now that Erdogan has survived, another attempt to do away with him by a
bigger, better planned operation must be on the cards. He is filled with anger
and rage against Americans. In this mood of his, how reliable a member of NATO
is he? Can the Alliance be quite as credible without NATO’s largest army and nuclear
facility which happens to be at Incirlik. It was built by the US Army Corps of
Engineers at the height of the Cold War. It is no longer a military secret that
the facility still holds 50 B61 hydrogen bombs, each 100 times more powerful
than the one dropped on Hiroshima.
And just imagine, Erdogan cut
off electricity to Incirlik. Why Incirlik? Because he conflated Gulen with
Americans? Gulen does have extensive institutional power in Turkey which
Americans have had access to for years. Gulen runs his Turkish Empire from his
headquarters in Pennsylvania. This explains Erdogan’s caustic comment after the
coup failed “Turkey cannot be governed from Pennsylvania”.
NBC news gave currency to a
dramatic story. On hearing of the coup, Erdogan rushed to Istanbul where his
plane was not allowed to land. The flight was diverted to Germany apparently in
such of exile. It was refused landing rights – this was the pattern elsewhere
too. Then, miraculously, Erdogan materializes in Turkey just when coup leaders
embark on initiatives which the US is averse to. The story acquires more layers
when the two Turkish pilots, who brought down two Russian pilots on 24
November, 2015, are named among those held by forces loyal to Erdogan.
F16 fighters controlled by
coup leaders were refueled by facilities at the US base at Incirlik.
Erdogan now is intolerable for
NATO; Turkey is indispensable to it. That is the Catch 22.
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Sir! As incisive as ever!
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