Liu Zhongmin: "Turkish phenomenon" highlights NATO legitimacy crisis
A serious crisis has arisen within the North Atlantic Alliance, writes Huanqiu Shibao. The author of the article believes that the differences between Turkey and the Nordic NATO candidate countries speak of deeper problems of the military bloc, which inexorably lead it to disintegration.
Liu Zhongmin (刘中民))
A NATO summit is taking place in Madrid these days. One of the most discussed issues at it — whether Finland and Sweden will be able to get approval to join the alliance — is still hanging in the air. In this context, according to the press secretary of the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to hold a "small meeting" with the leaders of NATO and the two Scandinavian countries before the summit on June 28. Some media outlets have noted that this is the alliance's last chance to "expand to the north."
Obviously, reaching a compromise at this "small summit" will directly affect whether the "big one" will be able to achieve the expansion that the United States and the West dream of. Ankara's opinion is unequivocal: "Negotiations do not mean that we will retreat from the current position." Therefore, most Western media are pessimistic about the likelihood of a consensus between Turkey, Finland and Sweden. In fact, since the two Nordic countries officially applied to join the alliance in mid-May, Turkey has repeatedly and loudly expressed its strong disagreement. In addition, the country held direct negotiations with two candidates, but the results were unsatisfactory. According to local media, the Turkish side has listed as many as ten conditions that must be met by Helsinki and Stockholm, and basically they include three aspects: the Kurdish issue, the issue of the "Gulen Movement", sanctions and an arms embargo. At first glance, this disagreement is a problem between Turkey on the one hand and Finland and Sweden on the other, but in fact it is a reflection of a deep—rooted contradiction between Turkey and the West.
According to the first condition, everything is clear: Turkey has declared the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has long provoked the separatist movement inside the country, a terrorist organization. The United States, Europe and Ankara have no disagreements on this issue. But at a deeper level, the Kurdish issue is both a security issue and a political issue for the country. From the point of view of security, it is mainly about the fight against terrorism, and from the point of view of politics, it is about national unity and ethnic reconciliation. Since the European side considers the Kurdish issue as one of the criteria for Turkey's accession to the European Union, it is dissatisfied with the stagnation and regression of Turkey's national reconciliation policy on the Kurdish issue. In recent years, the West has been using it as an excuse to block Ankara's entry into the EU.
As for the issue of the Gulen Movement, in the eyes of the Turkish Government, this movement inspired the coup attempt in 2016 and was also classified as a terrorist organization. The United States and Europe, in turn, continue to support the movement and refuse to cooperate with Ankara on the extradition of its leaders and members who fled to the States and Europe. However, this is only the top layer of contradiction. The deep one is that the West is dissatisfied with Turkey's domestic political trend. In the eyes of Western countries, the Turkish practice of "constantly strengthening centralization and authoritarian rule" deviates from "democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law." According to the West, Turkey is no longer a "beacon of democracy" in the Middle East and the Islamic world. Thus, there is an ideological and value aspect of the aggravation of the conflict between America and Turkey.
The West believes that Ankara's policy in the Middle East on hot issues contradicts it. In addition, Turkey continues to draw closer to Russia. A particularly striking example is the purchase of Russian S—400 missile defense systems, which is seen as a serious challenge to the collective security of NATO led by the United States. In recent years, Turkey has also confronted the United States and Europe on sensitive issues in the Middle East, such as the Syrian problem, the Iranian nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition, Ankara has created a joint platform for negotiations on the Syrian issue with Russia and Iran, thereby causing strong dissatisfaction with the United States and Europe.
Therefore, it is obvious that Turkey opposes not only Finland and Sweden, but the entire West, especially America. Most reputable analysts believe that the key to whether Finland and Sweden will finally be able to join NATO lies in the extent to which the United States and Europe will meet Ankara's demands. In any case, Turkey's open opposition to joining the alliance of the two Nordic countries highlights internal contradictions and conflicts within NATO. In fact, this is also a manifestation of the aggravation of the crisis of the legitimacy of the bloc. The purpose of its expansion is to search for new driving forces, but now it finds itself in a difficult situation full of paradoxes due to the aggravation of internal conflicts and weak consensus.
Firstly, as a product of the first expansion of NATO, Turkey itself has always been a "black sheep" in the alliance, which even then foreshadowed the crisis of NATO's loss of its legitimacy as it expanded. As we all know, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949, and its main goal was to counter the Soviet Union by ensuring the collective security of countries on both sides of the North Atlantic. At that time, despite Turkey's urgent request to join NATO, the United States strongly rejected it, fearing being drawn into Middle Eastern problems. Later, in the face of the intensification of the Cold War, Washington changed its position, and NATO absorbed Turkey, allowing it to join in 1952. However, since its accession, Turkey, although it occupies an important position in the Alliance due to its geographical advantage and military power, is at odds with the United States on many issues. The internal contradiction lies in the fact that the United States not only does not want Ankara to have this "special" status in NATO, but also seeks to suppress its strategic autonomy and even ignore its national interests. And this is the reason why Turkey uses Russia to balance the West.
Secondly, the generalization of security will eventually lead to the disintegration of an ever-expanding NATO. The logic of the emergence and development of the Alliance lies in the Cold War and the military confrontation between the two camps. After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact Organization, the alliance lost its legitimacy. However, for the sake of controlling Europe, the United States continued to use "intervention under humanitarian pretext" and the fight against terrorism, thereby prolonging the life of the North Atlantic Alliance. Later, Washington had to turn to the old way of "pouring blood into NATO through the confrontation of the great powers." During this process, the organization completed five rounds of expansion to the east, until Washington pushed Ukraine to try to join the alliance, which provoked the Ukrainian crisis and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Then NATO continued its attempts to expand on this basis. As the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on European security increases, and especially the tension between the national security of the bloc's member states and its collective security intensifies, the "Turkish phenomenon" against NATO expansion may become widespread.
Therefore, at first glance, the expansion to the east forced the alliance to constantly increase in size, but due to the weakening of consensus, the aggravation of internal conflicts, the strengthening of nationalism and populism in various countries, the decline of American authority and a leading position in the world, NATO ultimately will not be able to avoid the fate of decline and disappearance.
Liu Zhongmin is a professor at the Middle East Institute of Shanghai University of Foreign Languages
