Seventy-five years after its founding, NATO has grown from its original twelve members to thirty-two countries today. While the organization sees expansion as a means to assure peace, Turkey’s antics raise questions about whether the defense alliance’s vitality also requires removing countries that are no longer a good fit. No patient wants to have a limb amputated, but when gangrene sets in, he has no choice.
MEF Chief Editor Jim Hanson brought up this possibility in a Q&A during a panel on The Future of NATO at the 4th Geopolitical Summit hosted by the Danube Institute and Heritage Foundation in Budapest, Hungary on September 17 and 18, 2024.
This is not to bash Turkey. Turkey’s NATO membership served the alliance well throughout the Cold War. Turkey was one of only two NATO members to border the Soviet Union, and Turkey hosted crucial listening posts and forward deployments of aircraft and nuclear weapons. But with current ruler Recep Tayyip Erdoğan actively pushing Islamism in the military, Turkey is no longer a good fit. Erdoğan’s irredentism, neo-Ottomanism, and support for U.S.- and European Union-designated terror groups makes Turkey an even greater liability. The transformation of Turkey into a religious state run sultan-style with a cult of personality is dangerous enough, but its open flirtation and partnerships with Russia, the adversary NATO essentially exists to counter, is perhaps a disqualifying act.
The United States removed Turkey from the F-35 fighter program in 2019 after it purchased S-400 air defense systems from Russia. As a consolation prize, the Biden administration allowed Turkey to purchase modernized F-16s in order to end their de facto veto over Sweden’s NATO membership.
The S-400 dispute was not only about choosing a Russian anti-aircraft system over a NATO one. To integrate the S-400 into Turkey’s air defense would betray NATO secrets. Keeping the S-400 a completely separate system also would endanger NATO by allowing Russia to determine ways to track and compromise the F-35. The incident raised the question: How can a NATO member allow Moscow access to its most advanced systems that NATO uses to keep Russia at bay? NATO officials may have once believed it was better to have Turkey inside the tent causing trouble, rather than outside the tent perhaps more openly cavorting with enemies. That calculation has now changed; NATO and Turkey are simply incompatible.
NATO has never removed a member, although both France and Greece did temporarily remove themselves from many functions. Nor is there even a process to expel a member. Erdoğan is 70 years old and theoretically could dominate Turkey for another decade. Even if removed from office, his transformation of the Turkish military means his vision likely will persist for decades longer.
To sideline Turkey within the alliance or quarantine it, NATO has many options. An alliance is an agreement among the members. NATO might hold a membership vote to declare Turkey in material breach of the Washington Treaty, NATO’s founding charter. If members decide Turkey is no longer a functioning member, Turkey has little recourse; it cannot take the dispute to the United Nations or any other transnational organization because none has jurisdiction over NATO.
NATO also could create a Special Committee of Member Nations Not Named Turkey, effectively sidelining Turkey without kicking them out. It could allow for normal alliance operations among the other countries and simply not include Turkey in the meetings or decisions. It does not solve, however, the issue of Turkey still having a mutual defense recourse under Article V.
Another option would be to create a NATO 2.0 without Turkey, something European officials openly discussed as an advantage of Emmanuel Macron’s 2018 European Army plan, though that proposal faltered over its viability to function without the United States or Canada. A New NATO also might provide a chance to revise the Washington Treaty and the rationale for NATO in the modern geopolitical climate: Does it look beyond Russia to other threats like China and Iran? Should NATO take seriously its own Article II requiring members to work toward free institutions and even a defense of Western civilization and culture?
There is a risk, of course, if new negotiations weaken the binds of the remaining members. But the status quo is no longer tenable and grows more dangerous each year. It is time to discuss openly what many NATO members now whisper in the corridors.
