Recommendable! Good point! Yes, the ageing President Erdogan (age 70) has been trying hard to be a reincarnated Osman sultan! Turkey has become a serious headache for some time! The old Erdogan is capricious and erratic!
Rubin omitted the obvious question why the critical NATO TPY-2 radar is not stationed in Israel instead of Turkey! He discusses all kinds of other countries, but not Israel.
"Turkey’s turn from the West is obvious to all but the most ardent apologists. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey ... has become a money-laundering hub, a sanctions evasion lifeline for both Iran and Russia, a proliferator of weaponry to dictatorships and perpetrators of genocide, the largest prison for journalists, and an unrepentant terror sponsor. Erdogan’s decision both to extort NATO over Finnish and Swedish membership and Turkey’s refusal to return classified F-35 schematics should end any notion that the United States can trust Turkey on defense.
Despite this, the White House, and many in the State Department and Pentagon argue that the defense relationship with Turkey is simply too important to risk a further crisis with the problematic partner. On the three greatest issues of U.S.-Turkey defense partnership—Turkey’s role in NATO, U.S. use of the Incirlik Air Base, and the TPY-2 early warning radar near Malatya—such concerns are wrong.
Is Turkey’s NATO Contribution Real?
On paper, the assets Turkey brings to NATO are sizeable. Turkey ranks second in men under arms after the United States, and has more active duty military personnel than Germany and Italy combined. In reality, this metric is irrelevant. ...
Others cite practicalities. By any objective measure, Turkey should not be part of NATO, but the defensive alliance cannot expel Turkey because there is no mechanism within NATO statutes to do so. To antagonize the country could encourage Ankara to retaliate. Because NATO operates by consensus, Turkey could act as a Trojan horse and paralyze NATO decision-making. While this problem is real, submitting to blackmail is not a strategy. ...
Is Incirlik Air Base Still Important?
Incirlik is also no reason to rationalize Turkey’s behavior. Too often, problematic partners host U.S. bases because they understand them to be “get-out-of-jail-free” cards to escape accountability for malign behavior. This is the case not only with the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, but also with Incirlik. Incirlik’s importance, however, has declined since the end of the Cold War both because of Turkey’s insistence that it have veto power over U.S. operations launched from Turkish territory and because the Soviet Union’s collapse provided other alternatives. Both Romania’s Fetesti Air Base and its Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base already support U.S. operations including by F-16s and F-22 raptors. Crete’s recently expanded Souda Bay is a crucial hub for both the U.S. Navy’s surface warfare fleet and its naval aviation. ...
Incirlik’s importance however goes beyond air power to its role as a repository for U.S. nuclear missiles. The U.S. placed nuclear missiles at the base in 1959, where perhaps 50 remain. Today, however, these are a liability rather than asset. Given Turkey’s volatility, Incirlik is perhaps the most vulnerable U.S. base in the world, in line to be the next Wheelus Air Force Base, the U.S. air base in Libya evacuated after Muammar Qadhafi’s rise to power. ...
Are There Alternatives to Turkey-Based Missile Detection?
Perhaps the greatest contribution Turkey makes to U.S. and European defense is to host the TPY-2 radar, a missile-defense system that can detect, classify, and track ballistic missiles. NATO installed the TPY-2 at Kürecik in 2012 following an agreement two years earlier at the Lisbon Summit to create a ballistic missile detection and defense system for all members of the alliance. Geographically, Kürecik, a town in eastern Anatolia 40 miles west of Malatya and roughly equidistant between Aleppo, Syria and Turkey’s Black Sea Coast, is well-suited to detect launches from both Iran and southern Russia, where many of Russia’s ballistic missiles are clustered. While the United States initially had operational control over the facility, President Barack Obama’s transfer of Kürecik’s control to NATO gave Erdogan leverage over the facility that he previously lacked. ...
With So Many Alternatives, Why Does the US Still Rely on Turkey?
For too long, Turkish officials have exaggerated Turkey’s real and potential contributions to European and NATO defense. In essence, they promote the big lie that strategists accept through repetition. A benign, pro-Western Turkey could contribute to European defense, but today Turkey is a liability rather than asset. ..."
No comments:
Post a Comment