WSJ: AT BEST, IT SEEMS TURKEY WILL BE AN UNRELIABLE PARTNER

PanARMENIAN.Net
06.11.2009 19:20 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The European Union has long debated the merits of
Turkish EU membership. But now, nearly a decade after Islamists took
the reins of power in Ankara, the central question is no longer
whether Turkey should be integrated into Europe’s economic and
political structure, but rather whether Turkey should remain a part
of the Western defense structure, The Wall Street Journal’s David
Schenker says in an article titled A NATO without Turkey?

According to author, "recent developments suggest that while Turkey’s
military leadership remains committed to the state’s secular, Western
orientation and the defining principles of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, the civilian Islamist government led by the Justice
and Development Party (AKP) seems to have different ideas. Ankara
is increasingly pursuing illiberal policies at home, for instance
by attacking independent media, while aligning itself with militant,
anti-western Middle East regimes abroad."

"The latest demonstration of Ankara’s political shift was its
cancellation last month of Israel’s long-standing participation in NATO
military exercises in Turkey. Even worse, on the same day Israel was
disinvited, Turkey announced imminent military exercises with Syria,
a member of the U.S. list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism."

These developments came just weeks after Ankara and Damascus
established a "senior strategic cooperation council." These
developments could signal the beginning of the end of Turkey’s close
military and economic cooperation with the Jewish state. 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. 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. Should this occur, it would constitute
the most dramatic development in the region since the 1979 Islamic
Revolution in Iran," says the article.