Why does Turkey remain in NATO? Ideologically, Turkey stands alone. It is an Islamist state and dictatorship in an association of democracies. Geopolitically, Turkey has more in common with Russia and Iran than with Europe.
Erdoğan’s insistence that Turkey remain in NATO may be more sinister. Turkey has great power ambitions.
At an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodyrmyr Zelensky on February 28, 2025, President Donald Trump cast doubt on the viability of NATO. His moral equivalence is a dagger at the heart of NATO, but Trump is neither the first nor only threat to NATO. Turkey’s populist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long relished his ability to threaten NATO from inside.
He has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to paralyze the alliance by blocking consensus. When Sweden and Finland sought to join NATO, for example, Erdogan used his de facto veto to extort Stockholm and Helsinki to get them to roll back their freedoms and censor political dissidents on their soil.
- While NATO secretary-generals will sing Turkey’s praises publicly and highlight the country’s supposed contributions to the alliance, privately all officials agree: If war loomed between Russia and any NATO member, Turkey would engage both in a bidding war for Ankara’s support.
Erdogan may despise NATO but he realizes his power derives from it. Unlike French President Charles de Gaulle who withdrew France from NATO’s integrated military command in 1966 or Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis who followed suit eight years later, Erdogan is not willing to put principle above the power to extort that he derives from being NATO’s Trojan horse.
There may be something more than greed and hatred for liberal Europe that explains Erdogan’s NATO embrace, however. After all, Erdogan’s ability to blackmail may already have reached its limit. NATO can work around its distrust of Turkey by quarantining the country within the alliance or refining plans among the likeminded majority as it did during the Cold War’s Berlin Crisis to avoid bureaucratic logjams.
Erdoğan sees the Ottoman Empire’s collapse as the 20th century’s greatest tragedy.
Rather, Erdogan’s insistence that Turkey remain in NATO may be more sinister. Turkey has great power ambitions. It currently occupies not only Cyprus but large chunks of Syria and Iraq. Just as Russian President Vladimir Putin sees the Soviet Union’s collapse as the greatest calamity of the 20th century, so too does Erdogan see the Ottoman Empire’s collapse as the 20th century’s greatest tragedy.
Erdogan may believe NATO could provide Turkey with the necessary protection to resume its natural place in Erdogan’s mind. At issue may be Erdogan’s nuclear ambition. That Turkey seeks nuclear power is no secret. Turkey will begin operating its Russia-built Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant this year.
Akkuyu is dangerous for several reasons. First, Turkey sits astride an earthquake zone. Because of Turkey’s endemic corruption, there is no such thing as an earthquake-safe building in Turkey; certificates attesting to building safety are more bribery receipts than testaments to engineering standards. When the earthquake hits, not only Turkey’s Mediterranean and Aegean resorts, but also Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Romania will be impacted heavily.
Second, the danger is not the Akkuyu will itself provide the enriched uranium for nuclear weapons; rather, it is that it could serve a similar function to Iran’s Bushehr reactor: As a front for illicit imports and activities. Neither Akkuyu nor Bushehr can build a bomb, but the engineers from both can put their signatures on imports and orders that the Turkish and Iranian government can divert to covert programs based elsewhere.
When revisionist states believe they engage in a win-win strategy, the world loses. The question now for NATO is how to derail Turkey’s ambitions.
In 1981, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq tried to build a reactor at Osirak whose uranium the Iraqi military could use to build a nuclear weapon. An Israeli airstrike ended that project. Likewise, in 2007, an Israeli airstrike destroyed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s covert plutonium processing plant outside of Deir ez-Zour.
Theoretically, an Israeli airstrike on Turkey could be even easier: After all, Israeli F-35s need not overfly any territory other than Turkey’s given Akkulyu’s proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. What could dissuade Israel is not the technical difficulty of hitting a Turkish target but rather Turkey’s membership in NATO.
- After all, if Turkey could prove Israel behind the attack—and Jewish state has enough enemies within the U.S. Congress and intelligence community who would leak evidence to establish Israel’s guilt—then in theory, NATO would have to come to Turkey’s aid against Israel.
In effect, Erdogan can hide behind NATO’s skirts as he rushes for the nuclear bomb. Either he gets it, in which case he can leave NATO as a regional superpower able to blackmail Greece, Cyprus, and perhaps even Bulgaria into further territorial concessions or he rallies European states to fulfill his goal to destroy the Jewish state.
When revisionist states believe they engage in a win-win strategy, the world loses. The question now for NATO is how to derail Turkey’s ambitions. Perhaps a European army omitting Turkey would not be such a bad outcome in this case as it would free Israel both to destroy Akkulyu and relieve other NATO states of any obligation to prevent an outcome that would be to the benefit of everyone in the region outside Turkey itself.
Published originally under the title “Is Turkey Holding NATO Hostage to Get a Nuclear Bomb? Theoretically, an Israeli Airstrike on Akkuyu Could Be Easy.”
