Middle Eastern fortunes have changed dramatically over recent months. Iran is down and, especially after the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey is up. This may be a net positive for now, but not for long if Turkey’s current trajectory continues.
Michael Rubin recently wrote:
“Too many Western officials and analysts make two basic mistakes when it comes to Turkey. First, they see Turkey as it was, or as they wish it to be, rather than as it is. Two decades of Erdoğanism have transformed the country irreversibly. Second, they believe that because Turkey is not Iran or Russia, it represents a positive force.”
While arms-control attention in the Middle East focuses on Iran, Turkey may operationalize its Akkuyu nuclear plant within months. Turkey has good reasons to pursue nuclear weapons. It fits with Turkey’s resurgent imperialism. It is also important for deterrence as Iran nears its own nuclear weaponization.
This should worry Israel. Israel has managed its relationship with Turkey over the decades, but a fragile international order, revanchist Turkey, and potential Turkish nuclear armament make the prospects of future such management bleak.
Elsewhere, Rubin points out that Israel might have to attack Turkey’s nuclear plant. This would complicate Israel’s relationship with the United States.
While arms-control attention in the Middle East focuses on Iran, Turkey may operationalize its Akkuyu nuclear plant within months.
Under Article 5 of the NATO charter, an attack against one member in Europe or North America is an attack against all. Turkey was added as a member later, and so Article 6 added “the territory of Turkey” to NATO’s defensive obligations. This means that, because NATO is a U.S.-ratified treaty and its charter is U.S. law, an attack against Turkey is an attack against the United States, and the U.S. government, again, under U.S. law, is required to “assist [Turkey] by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.”
This is further a problem because Israel is not a U.S. treaty ally, and there is no legal obligation to defend it.
NATO’s collective defense commitment is absolute and does not distinguish between provoked and unprovoked attacks. Rubin suggests a few loopholes. One is cyber sabotage. This would not violate existing NATO practice. Estonia is the victim of the first-ever state-sponsored cyberattack in 2007, and it did not trigger Article 5, nor have many other Russian cyberattacks over the past decade and a half against NATO members. Likewise, covert operations will be outside the bounds of Article 5, as NATO members have tolerated many Russian intelligence operations, including assassinations on European soil. The problem is that, as the Iranian nuclear program case shows, these are good delaying tactics, not permanent fixes.
Another loophole Rubin mentions is a covert, conventional attack without taking credit for it. This is akin to the attack against the Syrian plant in 2007. Whereas this might legally save Israel from NATO retaliation, at best, it will cause a crisis within NATO. At worst, it will expose its mutual defense clause as optional and hollow.
It also could force Turkey out of NATO, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Turkey is a disruptive actor inside NATO that nobody likes. On the other hand, Turkey is the key to the Black Sea—which has proven very useful against Russia during the Ukraine War. It is also geographically located between Russia and the Middle East and complicates, if not entirely blocks, Russian access to the region. This was key in protecting the Middle East from Soviet domination throughout the Cold War.
But as Rubin also points out, Turkey’s nuclear ambitions will not be met positively by NATO members, either, especially Greece. All members also have a shared interest in protecting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It is in NATO’s best interest to resolve this problem while it can—before Israel must.
Erdoğan is a troublemaker within NATO, but he does not trust Russia enough to forgo NATO’s protection.
It will not be the first time that NATO has gone through an internal crisis over nuclear weapons. During the 1960s and before the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty era, Germany considered developing nuclear weapons. A German nuclear weapon was unacceptable to the United Kingdom and France, but Germany complained that preventing it from acquiring nuclear capability would be a double standard and contrary to NATO’s “equals” promise. The crisis brought NATO close to collapse until German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer voluntarily pledged that Germany would never pursue nuclear weapons.
Adenauer and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are more opposites than alike, but what drove the German statesman to make this pledge could likely convince the Turkish strongman too: That the crisis could break NATO with the Russian threat looming.
Erdoğan is a troublemaker within NATO, but he does not trust Russia enough to forgo NATO’s protection; he needs NATO more than NATO needs him. If he truly has nuclear ambitions, the best way to end them is from within NATO. This is in the best interest of the institution and its individual members. This includes Turkey, which has an interest in preserving NATO and staying in it to deter the Russian menace.
