Turkey in NATO

Dean Reuter:  Welcome to The Federalist Society's practice group podcast. The following podcast, hosted by The Federalist Society’s International & National Security Law Practice Group, was recorded on Thursday, July 6, 2017, during a live teleforum conference call held exclusively for Federalist Society members.

 

 

Dean Reuter:  Welcome to the practice group’s teleforum conference call as today we discuss the nation of Turkey and NATO. I’m Dean Reuter, Vice President, General Counsel, and Director of Practice Groups here at The Federalist Society. Please note that all expressions of opinion are those of the experts on today’s call, and this call is being recorded for use as a podcast in the future.

 

      We’re very pleased to welcome two new guests to Teleforum today. We’ll hear opening remarks from each of about 8 to 10, 12 minutes or so, and then, as always, we’ll be looking to the audience for questions. We’ll hear first from Alan Makovsky. He is the Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He’ll be followed by Blaise Misztal. He is the Director of National Security at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

 

      With that, Alan Makovsky, the floor is yours.

     

Alan Makovsky:  Thank you very much. It’s a very great honor for me to be able to address The Federalist Society by this means. The topic is Turkey and NATO, and what I thought I would do is just briefly give you an overview of why Turkey is in NATO, why it originally went into NATO, why it’s in today, and whether there are any prospects that the relationship with NATO will end.

 

      First of all, I think most of the audience knows NATO was formed in 1949 as a, really, part of the containment approach to dealing with communist expansion. Turkey, along with Greece, came in in 1952. And I would say there was a long debate within NATO whether it was appropriate for these two countries to -- neither of which, let’s say, were either majority Catholic or majority Protestant, whether they culturally and politically fit in.

 

      I think the main reasons that they did go in were, really, three. First of all, it helped to ensure that they themselves would not go communist. In Greece, there had been a civil war and a communist insurgency after World War II. Turkey had been directly threatened by Joseph Stalin, which is really the reason Turkey was interested in joining NATO.

 

      Turkey did a lot along the way between 1949 and ’52 to try to sell itself to NATO as a legitimate partner, and probably two of the most notable things that it did was join the Korean War on the United States’ side, where it took an enormous amount of casualties. I mean, killed and wounded amounted to well over a third of the troops that they sent. And also, Turkey in 1950 held its first free and fair democratic election. And that was strongly influenced by Turkey wanting to sell itself to NATO as a legitimate partner.

 

      Second of all, Turkey had a very long border with the Soviet Union, as well as with Bulgaria, roughly 300 mile plus border in the east with the Soviet Union plus the Black Sea and a land border with Bulgaria of about 140 miles, I believe. So Turkey became a great listening post for the United States.

 

      And the third reason, and this was particularly, I think, influential with the United Kingdom, which was one of the most resistant to the idea -- one of the most resistant Allies to the idea of bringing Turkey in, that Turkey could be a jumping off point to the Middle East. Turkey has only occasionally played that role over the years and very rapidly became resistant to the idea. But nevertheless, that was an important rationale for the British.

 

      Turkey was obviously -- maybe I should add a fourth reason. Turkey was also a buffer both against communism and against other forms of extremism coming from east of Turkey and south of Turkey. I think all of the points with the exception of the one about the Middle East were proven to be accomplished through Turkish membership.

 

      What about today? What about in the post-Cold War world? Why is Turkey still seen by the United States as a valuable ally? And still, despite all the problems, all of the foreign policy disagreements, what makes Turkey important?

 

      Well, first of all, the nature of U.S. involvement in the post-Cold War world -- I should say the nature of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War world is oriented towards a variety of troublemaking areas that tend to border Turkey. When he was Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs in 1994, Richard Holbrook, talking about Turkey, said, “It is at the center of every issue of importance to the United States on the Eurasian border.” And to this day, that is true. And we use it as a jumping off point in Iraq. We’re using it now against ISIS. It’s been important for pipelines carrying Caspian Sea gas, the Balkan crisis. Turkey is important for it being a function of other problems.

 

      Second of all, it frequently brings legitimacy to operations we do in Muslim countries. It is the only Muslim majority member of NATO since -- from 1952 until Albania became a member, which I believe was in 2008. Is that right? Something like that. But Turkey is obviously much larger than Albania, 80 million strong. And when Turkey takes part in operations, as it did in Afghanistan, that tends to give us a degree of legitimacy we, NATO, would not have, were Turkey not a participant.

 

      Third of all, Turkey remains important as a buffer, mainly against Islamic extremism. Now, this is a role that it has played with less effectiveness in recent years, particularly since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011 when it tended to open its borders to all kinds of people who were flowing through on their way to Syria to fight against the Bashar al-Assad regime. One of the results, and there are no firm public figures on this, but I think all experts agree there are now many cells of ISIS and other extremist groups in Turkey that did not exist a decade ago. Nevertheless, Turkey still plays a certain degree of a buffer role, more, let’s say, than Iraq would be.

 

      Now, what about Turkey? We see Turkey flirting with Russia, with China, wanting to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Does it really want to remain in NATO? Well, I think the reason -- I think it most certainly does. And just the other day, President Erdogan actually made a very firm statement in response to a reporter’s question, saying, “Yes, we definitely want to remain in NATO.” He said, “Yeah, of course we have our problems with the European Union, but not with NATO.”

 

      Now, why is NATO important to Turkey? First of all, security. Imagine -- I think some of you may remember that Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24, I think it was, in August of 2015 -- November of 2015, sorry. And I think we just imagined what would Russia’s response have been to Turkey had Turkey not been a member of NATO? As it was Russia did take strong measures, but these were strictly economic measures against Turkey.

 

      Now, one could also argue that maybe Turkey would not have had the courage to shoot down a Russian jet had it not been a member of NATO. But certainly Turkey feels far more protected, and its potentially threatening neighbors are far more deterred because of Turkey’s NATO membership.

 

      Second of all, Turkey likes to feel that it plays in the big leagues of the international community, and NATO is the organization that gives Turkey that major league status. And by the way, that also helps to improve Turkey’s status with its Middle Eastern neighbors, among whom Turkey also seeks leadership.

 

      Third of all, Turkey uses NATO’s leverage against other states. For many, many years during the Cold War, it was Greece. Many NATO exercises were held up, other projects held up, because of Greek-Turkish disagreements leading either Greece or Turkey to veto a NATO project until an accommodation was reached. The foreign minister of Turkey who served through the 1950s, Foreign Minister Rustu Zorlu, once said, “Wherever Greece is, we have to be. If Greece jumps into an empty swimming pool, we have to jump in after them.” And I think to a great extent, that is still the way Turkey views it.

 

      But it’s no longer just about Greece or even primarily about Greece. There are other countries Turkey uses its NATO leverage against. For example, one of the participants in NATO’s Partnership for Peace, its broad program for doing exercises and other sorts of cooperative projects with non-NATO members, one of the partners is Austria, with which Turkey has had a spat regarding Austrian statements opposing Turkey’s E.U. membership. Turkey has now put on hold Austrian membership -- I’m sorry, Austrian participation in a Partnership for Peace project.

 

      Lastly, and I think this is very importantly and maybe arguably as important as any of the other reasons, by its association with NATO, Turkey is being exposed to the world’s most modern armies and most modern technology, and also gaining more access than they otherwise would to the world’s most technologically advanced weapons. And that, I think, is particularly important. It has helped Turkey a lot.

 

      This is not the only reason, but Turkey in recent years has actually emerged as among the top 20 exporters of weapons in the world, and part of it is through this exposure. I think were Turkey not in NATO, Turkey would be more or less another large Middle Eastern country on the order of Egypt or perhaps Pakistan, to use a non-Arab and slightly non-Middle Eastern example.

 

      Would we ever expel Turkey from NATO? There are no provisions in NATO for expelling a member. That’s not to say there couldn’t be redlines. But given our own interests that I’ve enumerated in Turkey’s membership, Turkey would have to go pretty far in order to incur expulsion. And would Turkey ever voluntarily leave? It seems to me very unlikely for the reasons, again, that I’ve given here. What I think Turkey wants is to pursue a foreign policy as independently as it possibly can but remaining within the confines of NATO.

 

      With that, I’ll turn the program over to my colleague from the Bipartisan Policy Center, the director of foreign policy, Blaise Misztal.

 

Blaise Misztal:  Thank you, Alan, and thank you to The Federalist Society for having us on. It’s, as Alan said, a great honor to address such an august group. It’s also a great honor to be doing this with Alan, who you may not know, but I think is really considered the godfather in Washington of Turkish studies and someone from whom I have learned a great deal in the course of my own study on Turkey.

 

      I wanted to talk a little bit about the reasons that we might be skeptical of continued Turkish membership in NATO or would want to question whether they should remain a member, focusing on current events. And here, it’s sort of hard to pick a time window to look at, but I’ll arbitrarily draw the line starting in 2011 and looking forward.

 

      But before I do that, I wanted to offer an amendment to Alan’s points about the history of Turkish membership in NATO and go back to 1947. We just celebrated the 70th anniversary of President Truman’s address to Congress which coined the famous Truman doctrine, which was really precipitated by wanting to bring or keep Greece and Turkey in the fold. And it was his request to Congress to provide military and financial aid to Greece and Turkey was the founding, I think, of the martial plan approach to the rebuilding of Europe to strong U.S. engagement in Europe in order to preclude communist expansion.

 

      And it’s important to note that while what he was asking for was primarily military and financial aid, the Truman doctrine and the Truman speech was really couched in the language of democracy and freedom and self-determination. And the doctrine itself was about the right of free peoples to determine their own future. And that idea of freedom and democracy, I think, is intertwined with the last 65 years of Turkish NATO membership. Democracy and freedom are featured prominently in the NATO charter itself.

 

      As Alan said, it was Turkey’s holding of free and open elections in 1950 that paved the way to its membership in 1952. And even though Turkey has never been a perfect democracy, I think being part of NATO has been seen as part of its democratic aspirations as part of the pressure and process that has kept it heading in the right direction, on and off, over the last 65 years.

 

      And Alan, as you just reminded me, Secretary of State Kerry recently referred to NATO—well, recently while he was still Secretary—referred to NATO as a community of democratic nations. And I think that it an important part of how we think about NATO, or it’s an important question about how we should think about NATO. And I think this discussion that we’ll be having today really gets to the heart of the question here is what is future of NATO in the post-Cold War, post-9/11 world? And partly, depending on how you answer that question, will reveal how you judge or evaluate Turkey’s membership.

 

      But let me now jump to 2011 and questions that Turkish actions have raised about both the sincerity and appropriateness of its membership in NATO. 2011, obviously, the start of the Arab Spring with revolutions that threw over governments in Tunisia and Egypt, the start of a popular uprising in Syria. And it was really the opening of a chasm between the U.S. and Turkey, or between, I’d say, the U.S. and Europe on the one hand and Turkey on the other in terms of their foreign policy.

 

      And that played out in several places. It played out in Egypt with very strong support by the Erdogan government of the Morsi Muslim Brotherhood government that took control there. But the crucible was really Syria. And ever since the breakout of the Syrian civil war, when developments there went from just popular uprising to actual violence and fighting, the U.S. and Turkey have been at odds about what policy toward Syria should be and what objectives should be in Syria.

 

      But fundamentally, Turkey has not been supportive of the U.S. campaign against ISIS that took form in 2014. And at the very least, you can say that Turkey has been reticent in the fight against ISIS. And the best example of this is even though the global coalition against ISIS was formed by the United States in the summer of 2014, and immediately thereupon, the United States asked for permission from Turkey to use the Incirlik Air Base, which is a major airbase in the south of Turkey, very close to Syria that has a NATO presence, U.S. and other NATO forces regularly use the base. In fact, we store nuclear weapons there.

 

      When the United States asked in 2014 for permission from Turkey to use that base for operations in Syria, that request was denied. It was denied for the use of offensive military air power, so no air strikes. It was denied originally for the use of even surveillance drones. It was also denied, perhaps most problematically, for the use of combat search and rescue, which is a quick response force that you want to be able to go into enemy territory if you have a pilot that’s shot down, and therefore, it’s important for them to be stationed as close to the theater of operations as possible.

 

      Incirlik is mere tens of miles from the Syrian battlefield, and yet, Turkey denied permission to the United States to use the air base for all of those purposes for well over a year. It was only in the summer of 2015 that they granted permission to the United States to operate out of Incirlik, forcing us to operate from bases either further afield in the Middle East and on the Arabian peninsula, or from aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf.

 

      So just as a matter of carrying out their supposed responsibilities as a NATO member and the purpose of being a jumping off point, as Alan alluded to, in the fight against ISIS in the most important mission that the United States was undertaking in the Middle East at the time, and many other NATO countries were a member of, although NATO itself was not a member of the coalition, Turkey was not cooperative for quite a while.

 

      Just as worryingly was that while we were fighting ISIS, Turkey was pursuing a completely different agenda in Syria. And that agenda at first, at least, seemed to be focused on ousting Assad from power, and their willingness or desire to do that had them cooperate and support numerous groups that would be considered questionable if not dangerous by the United States government.

 

      And this, as Alan alluded to, meant opening their territory up basically to serve as a jihadist highway for foreign fighters traveling into Syria to join groups, if not like ISIS, then like al-Nusra. It meant serving as a refueling and basically a black market for extremist groups who were purchasing arms, food, and other supplies in Turkey. It meant serving as a financial hub for much of the money that supported these groups. And it even meant serving as, effectively, an R&R destination. Family members of extremist fighting often stayed in Turkey. Wounded extremists often came to Turkey for medical treatment.

 

      Over time, their objective in Syria seemed to shift from not just outing Assad but actually working against one of our closest partners on the ground in Syria, which is the Syrian Kurdish group known as the People’s Protection Units, or the YPG. In fact, as we speak now, Turkish military forces are positioned alongside the borders of territory controlled by the YPG. There’s been shelling of YPG positions and incursions by Turkish planes and troops into YPG territory, all at the same time as the United States is working with the YPG to take Raqqa, ISIS’s capital.

 

      And so what we’ve really seen is Turkey not just having different objectives from the United States and Turkey, not just making it more difficult for us to pursue our objective of defeating ISIS, but really working at cross purposes at times to the United States’ objectives, which has really raised the question of whether Turkey is a dependable ally or partner.

 

      A number of other issues have arisen over recent years. That includes, despite the shootdown of a Russian jet, as Alan said, close cooperation with Russia on a number of fronts, including the building of energy pipelines from Russia into Turkey via the Black Sea. It also has included refusal by Turkey to join U.S. and E.U. sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Crimea and Ukraine.

 

      Most recently, we’ve also seen Turkey flirting with the idea of purchasing a missile defense system from a non-NATO supplier. Originally, they signed a contract with a Chinese firm to procure Chinese missile defense systems. Eventually, under pressure from NATO, they backed out of that. They’re currently seeking to purchase a Russian S-400 missile defense system, the challenge here being that any such system would not be interoperational with other NATO equipment.

 

      And potentially, if Turkey were to try to use it during NATO drills or during NATO operations in addition to there being logistical difficulties, there might be a possibility for Russia to be able to gain information about NATO and NATO capabilities through that. So this has also raised questions about Turkey’s desire to remain in NATO or continue cooperating with NATO.

 

      And then, finally, I’ll raise domestic issues which, given the democratic dimension of NATO, have also been troubling. And really, here, it’s a story of Erdogan’s personal quest for power, which led earlier this spring to a constitutional referendum which changed Turkey’s political system, changed the constitution to create a new political system which really concentrated great power in the hands of the president, basically doing away, effectively, with the independence of the judiciary, something I imagine this group would care a great deal about, allowing the president to pick judges basically unilaterally, giving him the ability to essentially legislate by fiat, and has accompanied other changes and laws in Turkey that have made it much easier to censor media, to cut off access to online services, and has accompanied the jailing of numerous journalists, an ongoing state of emergency in Turkey for the last year, and numerous cases of libel personally filed by the president of Turkey against users of Twitter whenever he thinks that they insult him.

 

      And so you really have this personalization of power and really the crowding out of any open space for opposition or free expression in Turkey, which should be extremely abhorrent to anyone who cares about freedom of expression and  democracy.

 

      So for all these reasons, I think legitimate questions have been raised about whether Turkey should continue to be a member of NATO if it doesn’t cooperate with the national security objectives of other NATO states. It is seeking independent, incompatible defense systems. It is straying from the democratic principles that animate the alliance.

 

      As Alan suggested, I think it would be difficult and imprudent at this point to kick Turkey out, and maybe that’s something we can discuss in greater depth in the Q&A section. But I’ll just say that fundamentally, the concern is that Turkey is veering eastward and has a dalliance with Russia or has flirted with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. I think there’s no better way to ensure that they fully make that eastward turn than to kick them out of NATO. The challenge going forward is how to try to rein them in, as Alan said. They try to play around the edges as freely as possible.

 

      Knowing that we can’t kick them out of NATO, what sort of pressure can be exerted on them to try to bring them back in line with the alliance without fully throwing them out? But with that, I’m happy to entertain your questions, and I turn it back over to Dean.

 

Dean Reuter:  Well, thank you, gentlemen. In a moment we’ll hear an announcement that will say the floor mode is on. After you hear that announcement, if you have a question for either or both of our guests, push the star (*) button and then the pound (#) button on your telephone.

 

      While we wait to see who rings in, let me make a quick commercial announcement about our next scheduled Teleforum conference call. That’s tomorrow at 2 p.m. at this same number, 2 p.m. Eastern time. We’ll be talking about compensation for those who have been wrongfully imprisoned. That’s tomorrow at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

 

      Today, if you have a question, push the star button, then the pound button on your telephone. We’ve got just one question, then our lines are wide open. Let’s take our first call of the day.

 

Caller 1:  Hello?

 

Dean Reuter:  We can hear you. Go right ahead, caller.

 

Caller 1:  Oh, good. I just wanted to appreciate the characterizations you made, and I would agree with them to a great extent. I was stationed in Turkey as a military officer. I was qualified as a foreign area officer, specifically with regard to Turkey. And just a couple observations on this, as well as a question. The issues are very, very interesting that you bring on up, but I just also wanted to tell you things -- for example, Wikipedia is currently blocked in Turkey as well. But the whole aspect of this, I think, is worrisome.

 

      And my questions are, one, with the current number of military officers that have been arrested here, do you worry about Turkey’s ability to be essentially an effective ally? And two, with regard to the geopolitical situation, do you think that the Romanian and Bulgarian membership in NATO essentially can effectively replace Turkey? Thank you.

 

Dean Reuter:  Who wants to take a shot at that first? Go ahead, either of our experts.

 

Alan Makovsky:  Yeah, sure. This is Alan Makovsky. Look, on your first point, I think that it’s almost a certainty that the widespread purges of the military, which initially included about 50 percent of all the generals and admirals, just under 50 percent, and I’m told there’s been up to 90 percent of the staff officers. It’s inevitable that it’s affecting the quality of the military. Also, a lot of the people that the U.S. military was working with closely prior to the coup attempt were obviously lost in the purge. And it’s presumably herd cooperation.

 

      Now, I’ve been told by friends in the government that they have -- the problem is not that there’s nobody to talk to. The phones get answered and the basic operations get taken care of. But an entire layer of officer quality was removed, and those who were less seasoned have moved up before their time. And so there is concern about what might happen were, let’s say, there to be a very serious crisis, were the balloon to go up, as they say in the military.

 

      I would just add on that that Turkey’s recent Operation Euphrates Shield in Syria, I believe in part there were a number of reasons for it. Some were anti-Kurdish, anti-YPG reasons like Blaise enumerated. There were anti-ISIS reasons. But part of it was to announce to the region and the world, “Our military is still capable. Yes, you see we’ve had a series of purges, but we can still do it.”

 

      But in fact, what we saw was that the progress was very halting. What they predicted would be an operation of a couple of weeks turned out to take several months. And so I think we have already seen a dramatic illustration of how the purges may be affecting the Turkish military.

 

      Blaise, do you want to handle the second one?

 

Blaise Misztal:  Thanks, Alan. Let me just amplify a couple things you said. I think first of all, we have to remember that this is not the first purge that has happened in the Turkish military in recent history. In fact, under the Erdogan government, there were a number of -- two big trials that accused members of the military of plotting coups and sent a large number, in the hundreds, of senior ranking officers to jail based on evidence that we now know was completely fabricated, the irony here being that several years after these trials, Erdogan actually released the military members from jail, and despite being complicit in the trials, condemned them and said that they were shams, fake news, I guess as we’d say in today’s parlance, and then just a year after that, actually, did suffer an attempted coup.

 

      So the Turkish military has been purged three times over in the last ten years. That already drastically thinned the herd of officers, so I think what you’re seeing today is not just a numerically but a qualitatively weakened military. And I’d also add that specifically, the commanders of some of the most important elements of the Turkish military that was focused in the southeast, both on the fight against the PKK, which is the Turkish domestic Kurdish terrorist group, as well as protecting the Syrian border, as well as the commander of Incirlik Air Base, were all relieved of duty and put in jail. So some of the most important expertise in the Turkish military has basically been gotten rid of.

 

      As to whether we can easily replace Turkey, I think for a number of reasons, I’d say no.

 

Alan Makovsky:  I’m sorry. Let me just interject at that point that Erdogan was believed to want Turkish troops to move into northern Syria for some time. And the commanders in the field opposed it, and it didn’t happen. It was after those commanders were purged in the aftermath of the coup attempt that Operation Euphrates Shield took place. So that was another direct impact of the purge.

 

Blaise Misztal:  Thanks, Alan. And so as to whether we can replace Turkey, I think the answer is not very easily. As the caller’s experience demonstrates, NATO membership is not just about joining an organization, but it’s really about interoperability and the cooperation between military forces, the acquaintance and the knowledge that our military has of operating with Turkish troops in Turkey, the familiarity that Turkish officers have from being schooled throughout the years at U.S. military schools. All of that takes time to build up.

 

      So under the best case, if we had to undertake action with the Turkish military today, it would still go relatively smoothly, as opposed to having to train a whole new cadre of Bulgarian or Romanian military officers who would be capable of doing that.

 

      Then there’s always the question of capability. Here, I’d say that the Turkish military remains one of the larges land forces besides our own in NATO. It’s the second largest, and it’s still going to be significantly more capable, even in its currently deprived status, than Romania or Bulgaria could field.

 

      And finally, it’s just the geographical factor. It’s still very close to the area of operations in which we have been active for the last 15 years, and I envision us remaining active for another 15, unfortunately.

 

      So the short answer is no. Perhaps the closest that we could get—and I’ve written a little about this, and Alan has as well—to a replacement for Turkey would be northern Iraq, the Kurdish area of Iraq, either in its current autonomous status as the Kurdish regional government or if it were to become an independent state, as it has a referendum later this year on, it could provide both a friendly territory capable and now battle-hardened military force in the form of the Peshmerga and geographic centrality to all the areas that we care about. However, I think it’s a far cry from ever being a NATO member in any way, shape, or form. I’ll leave it there.

 

Dean Reuter:  Once again, if you have a question, push the star button, then the pound button on your telephone. We’ve got two questions pending. Let’s head in the direction of another caller.

 

Mary Maxwell:  Hello. Mary Maxwell here in Huntsville, Alabama. I understand that President Trump last night or perhaps this morning was speaking in Poland about the Article 5 commitment -- NATO’s Article 5, that is, that an attack on one is an attack on all. And since this is a Federalist Society phone call, I wonder if you would comment on how Article 5 comports with our Constitution, Article I, Section 8 clause on Congress having the power to declare war.

 

Dean Reuter:  Do either of our experts want to take a shot at that?

 

Alan Makovsky:  Well, perhaps I’m -- this is a little out of our lane, I’m afraid. I’m neither a constitutional scholar nor a lawyer. But look, Congress has not declared war, as you know, since Pearl Harbor. We have done authorizations to use military force, but we’ve really not done a war declaration since then. So I think informally, those rules have evolved.

 

      Now, it’s not clear to me -- and maybe I’m not smart enough to understand the question. It’s not clear to me exactly -- I guess your point is, do we have the right to say we would automatically join a war when Congress has not voted for that war? That’s what you’re asking, right?

 

Mary Maxwell:  Yes. More or less, yes.

 

Alan Makovsky:  Yeah. Look, I guess it’s arguable, but under Article 5, you do not have to join the war militarily. I don’t have the wording in front of me, but if you look at it, you’ll see that it allows for support of an indeterminate type. People usually assume it means  military support, but that’s not necessarily the case. So I suppose there’s various ways that our executive branch could support, let’s say, an attack on one of our allies without it being military.

 

      Now, of course, in terms of foreign policy, I think our allies would be extremely disturbed if our only response were non-military, but I believe it would accord with the wording of the treaty. If Congress did not do the war declaration, the president said, “We can’t go to war without a declaration of war from Congress,” he would nevertheless be able well within the authority of the executive branch to take action that would support in non-military ways an ally who has been attacked. I hope that speculation is of some help.

 

Mary Maxwell:  That was more or less on point. I just want to alter something you said, which is that our Constitution evolves by usage. No, it doesn’t. It only changes by amendment.

 

Alan Makovsky:  Sure, I accept that. I just -- like you have, I’ve just lived through, well, probably much longer than you have -- lived through a long period of time and witnessed a lot of wars, including while I worked in Congress as a staff member at the House Foreign Affairs Committee during the Iraq War, for example. I know there have been a number of wars that have been executed, although undeclared.

 

Mary Maxwell:  I’m not blaming anyone but Congress for that, or us, the citizens, for not --

 

Alan Makovsky:  -- Sure. Thank you for the very interesting question.

 

Blaise Misztal:  Let me just jump in quickly and follow up with the text of Article 5. It says it really only commits us to assist the party attacked by taking forthwith such action as it deems necessary. So as Alan said, it’s not necessarily to be military action.

 

      That being said, Article 5 has only been used once, and that was after the 9/11 attacks. So it was really about other NATO countries coming to our defense. At least thus far, it has worked out in our favor.

 

      And actually, on the Turkish question, in 2012, a Turkish jet was actually shot down by a Syrian plane. And Erdogan, then Prime Minister Erdogan, considered invoking Article 5 but either thought better of it or was talked out of it. But even in situations in which other countries have been attacked, they’ve stopped short of invoking it.

 

      Again, not a legal scholar, but I do believe under the War Powers Act, the president would have some authority legally and constitutionally to come to the military assistance of another country at his discretion. Obviously at some point, Congress should be involved, even if we haven’t seen that. But let me just use this to jump --

 

Alan Makovsky:  -- Let me just also add, because of its existence, because of the existence of Article 5, I think NATO countries have taken actions in support of -- particularly in support of Turkey to avert an attack. During the 1990 crisis over Iraq as it appeared that it was leading to war, some German planes were sent to Turkey, and also, we placed some Patriot anti-missile batteries in Turkey at that time.

 

      Turkey was very unhappy with the response, by the way, at the time. And then, of course, during the war with Syria, we’ve also had -- I believe there have been U.S. and Dutch Patriots on the Turkish border. Ours have been withdrawn, and I believe the Dutch have as well.

 

Blaise Misztal:  Yeah, that was our reaction in the 2012 shootdown.

 

      But I think the historical point about Article 5 is that it was really meant as a tripwire. It was meant to be a deterrent signal to the Soviet Union not to invade European countries because that would bring in the United States and other countries. And so I think its deployment in Poland today by President Trump was sort of the way that Article 5 was imagined as an eastern-looking deterrent.

 

      To this question of what is NATO’s role in the 21st century in a post-Cold War world, the question of whether Article 5 should be invoked every time Turkish jet gets shot down or after a terrorist attack, I think, really gets to the question of what is the purpose of NATO? Is it only to defend against Russian aggression? Does it have some sort of broader role? A really interesting legal question that I’d love to hear the much more expert group listening in maybe today is would a cyber attack rise to the level of something that might invoke Article 5 for common defense? But that’s probably enough of a tangent.

 

Alan Makovsky:  Yeah, on the issue of deterrent, it certainly operated that way following the Turkish shoot down of the Russian jet. Russia didn’t respond militarily, as we discussed earlier, and that was certainly because of the deterrent effect of Article 5.

 

      Now, there is a certain irony that when NATO was founded, it was presumed that the front was in central Europe, Germany. It wasn’t really founded to protect Turkey. And I remember in the ’90s having -- and actually earlier discussing with Turkish military officers whether they thought that NATO would, in fact, come to its defense if a Middle Eastern state attacked it.

 

      And I think there was a lot of disagreement. I think a lot of Turks felt that NATO probably would not. And I suspect they still have their doubts today. But it is possible that at some point, there will be a serious attack on the Turkish border, and Dutch and German and French and British political leaders are going to have to decide whether they want to send their sons and daughters to possibly die for Turkey.

 

Dean Reuter:  Gentlemen, we’ve still got two more questions remaining. Let’s check in with yet another caller.

 

Caller 3:  My question has to do with the risks to member country intelligence that Turkey may pose, with the fact that Turkey is purchasing additional F-35 fighters, some of the other military not just material but what we would call secrets that Turkey would be privy to as a member of NATO.

 

      And of course, with the tactical alliances already mentioned, the fact that various commentators have assessed Erdogan’s tilt to Islamism, if not full-on embrace, if Turkey is in a position of opposition to Western interests, what are the risks to our intelligence, and that would be what would be shared among NATO member countries? And where would the red line be drawn as far as concerns about Turkey and the kind of information Turkey would have access to?

 

Blaise Misztal:  That’s an excellent question. I think there’s a number of concerns there from the question of Turkey flying F-35s and other advanced U.S. military equipment if at the same time it were to, for example, actually procure Russian S-400s, meaning that it could basically be a testing ground for Russian systems when the punitive reason Turkey is buying from Russia is because it wants technology sharing, but it could very well be intelligence that’s going back the other way, even inadvertently on Turkey’s part.

 

      We also know that Turkey and Russian have set up intelligence sharing on the battlefield in Syria. And I think there are legitimate questions on whether Turkey is passing on intelligence that is also shared by the United States.

 

      I think here there’s a couple of issues. The first is I think there’s been, because of the lack of Turkish cooperation on ISIS, also a compartmentalization of the sort of intelligence sharing that’s going on with Turkey by the U.S. services. And the focus right now has been on providing Turkey with actionable intelligence on the threat of the PKK which, again, is their domestic Kurdish terrorist group that they’re also fighting in the southeast.

 

      And this is basically a carrot that we’re offering Turkey to make up for the fact that we’re cooperating with the YPG, which it considers also a terrorist group. So we’re trying to basically buy their acquiescence to us working with what they see as a terrorist group by helping them attack another similar terrorist group.

 

      So I think we’ve shifted the objectives of our intelligence sharing, but I think you’ve also seen very large concerns raised about the relationship of the Turkish intelligence services with other adversaries. And here, it’s not just Russia that I have in mind but the Iranians. And I don’t have any concrete information to give you, but I think that concern has been taken up by the intelligence community and has affected what that cooperation looks like today.

 

Dean Reuter:  Alan Makovsky, anything on this point?

 

Alan Makovsky:  No, that’s fine. I know time is limited, so why don’t we go on to your next question.

 

Dean Reuter:  We do have one question remaining. Let’s see if we can squeeze in this final call. Go ahead, caller.

 

Mary Ann McGrail:  Mary Ann McGrail. I’m an attorney in D.C. Has Turkey’s stature with NATO been affected at all by its extensive jailing of judges and lawyers? Or in another way of putting it, can NATO exert any influence over Turkey with respect to the jailing of the judiciary and lawyers?

 

Alan Makovsky:  This is Alan Makovsky. Look, I think we have to look at it more broadly than just the judges and lawyers, but all the democratic deficits that Turkey has incurred in recent years that we’ve enumerated earlier, including the jailing of journalists and the restrictions on social media, and freedom of speech, and distortion of elections, and the like. Certainly among the greatest sins is what they’ve done to the judiciary.

 

Mary Ann McGrail:  That, of course, suggests an internal legal breakdown which, it would seem to me, would impact Turkey’s stature within NATO.

 

Alan Makovsky:  I think Turkey’s stature in the West has been severely damaged by what’s been going on there. And that was when Blaise alluded to the fact that John Kerry had made a statement last year. It was actually a couple of weeks after the coup attempt in the very early stages of the purges, which, by the way, the purges started with judges and prosecutors, as I have a feeling that you probably know, Mary Ann.

 

      He said, remember, Turkey -- I’m paraphrasing, but this is pretty close. NATO is an alliance of democracies, and we will be monitoring closely what is happening in Turkey. From that, some people concluded that NATO might take some kind of action against Turkey. But I have to be honest; I don’t really see it. There is a parliamentary body within NATO, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, that I suppose theoretically Turkey could be expelled from that part without hurting the -- without affecting the military cooperation.

 

      But I’m kind of cynical on this. I think NATO is there for the sake of security interests, and although the constituent countries within NATO are extremely disturbed and alarmed, most of them, about Turkey, although Turkey’s relations with, in particular, Germany and the Netherlands and Belgium have deteriorated for a number of reasons, including because of the disregard of democratic values within Turkey, I don't think NATO is going to be the forum that takes that stance.

 

      But you know something? It does happen to be the forum to which Turkey belongs that Turkey most cares about. And perhaps some thought should be given to just how NATO could indeed be used in that regard because I think there’s pretty much a consensus -- well, actually, maybe I shouldn’t speak for every country in NATO when I think about Hungary and Poland and some of the countries that also have -- that are more sympatico with Turkey and Turkey’s approach right now with their current leaderships. But certainly a majority of countries within NATO are very disturbed about internal trends in Turkey, including what’s happening to the judiciary.

 

Blaise Misztal:  This is Blaise -- sorry.

 

Dean Reuter:  I -- go right ahead, Blaise. I was just going to say we have time for a final thought from you.

 

Blaise Misztal:  Well, I was just going to say very quickly that, as Alan alluded, Turkey is primarily -- or NATO is primarily a security-minded organization. It’s not really meant to coerce the behavior of its own members, and maybe other political organizations like the E.U. or the OSCE are somewhat better suited to this. But they’re not as effective, and Turkey doesn’t care as much about them.

 

      But there is a group of NATO parliamentarians, members of parliament from NATO countries that get together. So that is more of a political NATO-based parliament, and I think that would be a very interesting venue for some more political pressure to be put on Turkey for its many domestic political transgressions, and the elimination of judicial independence and rule of law. And the jailing of many judges and lawyers, I think, definitely would be foremost among those.

 

      So again, the domestic politics, I think, should matter and should be a part of the discussion about Turkey’s future in NATO, even if, ultimately, that future is to remain a member.

 

Alan Makovsky:  Do you have time for one more thought, or are we out?

 

Dean Reuter:  One quick comment.

 

Alan Makovsky:  All right. There was once an example, your audience may be interested to know, when the United States, speaking for NATO, threatened not to come to Turkey’s assistance in the case of a Soviet invasion. This was President Johnson in 1964 when there was concern that Turkey might invade Cyprus, as, in fact, it did 10 years later.

 

      President Johnson wrote a letter to the Turks saying, “If you do that, and the Soviet Union invades you at that time, don’t count on NATO support.” That letter has colored U.S.-Turkish relations ever since and has always created a major source of doubt about the United States in Turkey. So I thought you might be interested in that one historical example which impacts on some of the other things we’ve talked about.

 

Dean Reuter:  It’s been interesting throughout, and we end on an especially interesting note. I want to thank our two guests today, Alan Makovsky and Blaise Misztal. This has been very interesting. I want to thank the audience as well for dialing in and for your thoughtful questions. A reminder to our audience about our next scheduled call tomorrow at 2 p.m. We’ll be talking about compensation for those wrongfully imprisoned right here in the United States. But until that next call, we are adjourned. Thank you very much, everyone.

 

 

Dean Reuter:  Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed this practice group podcast. For materials related to this podcast and other Federalist Society multimedia, please visit The Federalist Society’s website at fedsoc.org/multimedia.