Sinan Ulgen, Columnist

Turkey is Learning Why NATO Membership Matters

The confrontation with Russia over Idlib is a timely reminder of the military and political benefits of being in the alliance.

March 5, 2020 at 9:52 AM UTC

By Sinan Ulgen

Sinan Ulgen is the executive chairman of Istanbul-based think tank EDAM and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels.

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Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

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Since the botched coup attempt of July 2016, a widespread skepticism of the U.S. has pushed Turkish policy makers to conceptualize a world order where Ankara would carve out a sizeable degree of strategic autonomy from the West—despite Turkey’s membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This line of thinking has led to a burgeoning relationship with Russia, crowned by the purchase of the S-400 missile-defense system.

But the escalating conflict over Idlib, where Turkey is seeking to protect its zone of influence against the advance of the Russian-backed Syrian army, has put the feasibility of this vision to the severest of tests.