THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XI, Issue # 97, April 6, 2009
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
DOES TURKEY STILL BELONG IN NATO?
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
THE DECLINING VIABILITY & VALUE OF TURKEY'S ALLIANCE WITH THE U.S.A. & THE WEST: TURKEY'S ISLAMIST
POLITICAL REGIME & THE GROWING UNRELIABILITY & DANGER OF TURKEY AS A MEMBER-STATE IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC
TREATY ORGANIZATION -- NATO AS AN INSTITUTION HOBBLED & WEAKENED WITHIN BY AN ISLAMIST TURKEY -- NATO
AS AN ALLIANCE FEARFUL OF OFFENDING A MEMBER-GOVERNMENT & THEREFORE INCAPABLE OF STANDING UP TO THE
WEST'S MAIN ENEMY TODAY, NAMELY MILITANT ISLAM -- THE NEED FOR SERIOUS CONSIDERATION OF REMOVING TURKEY
FROM MEMBERSHIP IN NATO
FULL STORY:
Smack on its 60th. anniversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finds itself facing a completely novel problem
– that of radical Islam, as represented by the Republic of Turkey, within NATO's own ranks.
Ankara joined NATO in 1951, and, shortly thereafter, Turkish forces fought valiantly with the allies in Korea. Turks
stood tough against the Soviet Union for decades. Following the United States, Turkey has the second-largest
number of troops in the NATO alliance.
With the end of the Cold War, NATO's mission changed and some saw Islamism as the new strategic enemy. Already
in 1995, NATO Secretary General Willy Claes compared Islamism to the historic foe: "Fundamentalism is at least as
dangerous as Communism was." With the Cold War over, he added, "Islamic militancy has emerged as perhaps the
single gravest threat to the NATO alliance and to Western security."
Indeed, NATO first invoked Article 5 of its charter, calling on "collective self-defense," to go to war against the
Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, responding to the 9/11 attacks launched from that country.
More recently, former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, arguing that "Islamist terrorism is a new shared threat
of a global nature that places the very existence of NATO's members at risk," advocates that the alliance focus on
combating "Islamic jihadism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." He calls for "placing the war
against Islamic jihadism at the center of the Allied strategy."
Claes and Aznar are right; but their vision is now in jeopardy, for Islamists have penetrated the 28-state alliance, as was
dramatically illustrated in recent days.
As the term of Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer concludes in July, 2009, a consensus had emerged to make
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 56, his successor. But Fogh Rasmussen was in office in early 2006,
when the Muhammad cartoon crisis erupted and he insisted that, as Prime Minister, he had no authority to tell a private
newspaper what not to publish. This position won him much criticism from Muslims, including Turkey's Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who instructed Fogh Rasmussen at the time that "Freedoms have limits, what is sacred should
be respected."
When Fogh Rasmussen came up for the NATO post, Erdogan continued his grudge, saying that his government looks
"negatively" on Fogh Rasmussen's candidacy because, Erdogan explained,
"I asked for a meeting of Islamic leaders in his country
to explain what is going on and he refrained from doing
that. So how can I expect him to contribute to peace?"
Eventually, Fogh Rasmussen was selected as the consensus candidate, but at a steep price. The Dane won the job only
after engaging in intensive negotiations with Turkish President Abdullah Gül hosted by U.S. President Barack Hussein
Obama. Fogh Rasmussen promised to appoint at least two Turks and publicly to address Muslim concerns about his
response to the cartoons. More broadly, Erdogan announced: Obama "gave us guarantees" concerning Turkish
reservations about Fogh Rasmussen.
The hoops that Fogh Rasmussen had to jump through to win Ankara's support can be inferred from his cringe-inducing,
dhimmi-like remarks on winning the appointment:
"As Secretary-General of NATO, I will make a very
clear outreach to the Muslim world to ensure
cooperation and intensify dialogue with the
Muslim world. I consider Turkey a very important
ally and strategic partner and I will cooperate with
them in our endeavors to ensure the best
cooperation with Muslim world."
We appear to be witnessing the emergence not of a robust NATO following the Claes-Aznar model, one leading the fight
against radical Islam, but an institution hobbled from within, incapable of standing up to the main strategic threat, for fear
of offending a member government.
Nor is Islamism NATO's only problem with Turkey. In what is emerging as a Middle Eastern cold war, with Tehran leading
one faction and Riyadh the other, Ankara has repeatedly sided with the former – hosting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
advocating for Iran's nuclear program, developing an Iranian oil field, transferring Iranian arms to Hezbollah, openly
supporting Hamas, viciously condemning Israel, and turning Turkish public opinion against the United States.
Noting these changes, columnist Caroline Glick urges Washington to "float the notion of removing Turkey from NATO."
The Obama administration is not about to do that; but, before Ankara renders NATO toothless, dispassionate observers
should carefully think this argument through.
© Daniel Pipes 2009
Originally Published in the Philadelphia Bulletin, April 6, 2009
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, April 6, 2009
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/6269/
does-turkey-still-belong-in-nato
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Turkey, the Middle East, & the U.S.A.
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Middle East: Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is the Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
the Founder of Campus Watch, a signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S.
Institute of Peace, a former adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and
Technology, and a former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the
University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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