by Daniel Pipes
November 9, 2009
updated Jan 17, 2012
I raised the issue of Turkey’s continued membership in NATO in April 2009 at “Does Turkey Still Belong in NATO?“; here I will collect others who agree that the issue at least needs to be raised.
While it’s still too early to write Turkey out of NATO, in the not so distant future, the alliance will reach a decision point. In 2014, NATO’s next generation fighter plane, the Joint Strike Fighter, will be delivered. Given the direction of Turkish politics, serious questions must be asked about whether the Islamist government in Ankara can be trusted with the highly advanced technology.
(November 5, 2009)
Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) headed by Geert Wilders: reassess Turkey’s membership in NATO on the basis that its government has abandoned its allies – first Israel and now France. (December 26, 201)
Rick Perry, governor of Texas and Republican presidential candidate, asked a question at the South Carolina debate by Bret Baier of Fox News:
Bret Baier: Governor Perry, since the Islamist-oriented party took over in Turkey, the murder rate of women has increased 1,400 percent there. Press freedom has declined to the level of Russia. The prime minister of Turkey has embraced Hamas and Turkey has threatened military force against both Israel and Cypress. Given Turkey’s turn, do you believe Turkey still belongs in NATO?
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas at the South Carolina debate on Jan. 16, 2012.
Rick Perry: Well, obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by, what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then yes. Not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO, but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it. (Applause) And you go to zero with foreign aid for all of those countries. And it doesn’t make any difference who they are. You go to zero with that foreign aid and then you have the conversation about, do they have America’s best interest in mind? And when you have countries like Turkey that are moving far away from the country that I lived in back in the 1970?s as a pilot in the United States Air Force that was our ally, that worked with us, but today we don’t see that.
It’s time that NATO start thinking about a worst case scenario in Turkey. For even if the increasingly Islamist state remains a NATO partner, at best, it seems Turkey will be an unreliable partner. Since the 1930s, the country has been a model of modernization and moderation in the Middle East. But absent a remarkable turnaround, it would appear that the West is losing Turkey.
(January 16, 2012)
Source material can be found at this site.
