Turkey’s poor relations with the West risks paralysing NATO

The deteriorating relationship between Turkey and
its European allies risks undermining the ability of NATO to make collective
decisions, analyst Antoine Got said on Thursday.
Got said NATO’s reliance on consensus made it
vulnerable to bilateral disputes between members, such as Turkey’s threat to
veto a defence plan for the Baltic states and Poland against Russian aggression
unless the alliance designated the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria a
terrorist organisation.
Turkey considers the YPG the Syrian-wing of the
outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging an internal
conflict against since the 1980s. However, the YPG forms the backbone of the
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) a key western ally that provided the ground
troops for the U.S.-led coalition's campaign to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS)
in Syria.
But perceived Western support for the YPG eroded
NATO’s credibility with Turkey just as the country gained leverage over the
European Union by threatening to “open the gates” for Syrian refugees, Got
said. “Given its shrewd sense that the tables have turned, Ankara has lost many
incentives to cooperate.
“As Ankara grows more defiant, NATO members are
indeed finding it difficult to reign in their southeastern ally,” he said.
Turkey is also as odds with the EU in the Eastern
Mediterranean, where the recent discovery of natural gas reserves has given new
impetus to long-standing territorial disputes with Greece and Cyprus.
But Got said NATO can play a constructive role in
de-escalating tensions with Turkey in a way that the EU has thus far struggled
to achieve: “NATO can generate the much-needed safety valve where diplomatic
efforts have a chance of succeeding.”
The central role of the United States in the
alliance had also proved crucial in the past and could so again under
President-elect Joe Biden, he said.
“When Greece and Turkey were on the cusp of war over
Cyprus in 1974, a decisive factor that prevented hostilities from occurring was
the ability of the United States to lean in and force the contenders into
making concessions.”