It's Time To Toss Turkey Out Of NATO

Had it not been for the accidents of geography, the limits of technology, and the plain fact that the Truman Doctrine specifically mentioned Turkey along with Greece as being under direct threat by the Soviet Union, Turkey would never have been invited to join an alliance with the words, North Atlantic, in its name. The original justifications for Turkey's membership in NATO have expired along with the cold war, but had Turkey not changed so much in the past few years, it could still play a major--and positive--role in the new cold war between the civilized states and the countries dominated by political Islam.

It is not as if the US and the other members of NATO had not known for years before the event that simple demographics assured the eventual fall of Turkey to political Islam. (Even the Geek got a timely heads up from a Turkish officer at Leavenworth some fifteen years ago. The captain told the Geek that the Islamist leaning "peasants" from Anatolia outnumbered the urban descendants of Ataturk.)

The astute warning given by the Turk proved accurate. The AKP (Peace and Freedom Party) got the votes and now is the government. To pass legal muster the AKP applied a modicum of rhetorical whitewash to its Islamist manifesto. No sooner did Erdogan and company take over in Ankara than the agenda of political Islam came roaring forth. In its conduct of affairs both internal and external the Erdogan regime has followed the political Islam playbook albeit with less bloodshed than has been the case elsewhere. (They had to be careful at least until the Army was defanged and kept to the barracks.)

To keep the Army muzzled, Erdogan's merry crew used the pending and obviously hopeless petition for membership in the European Union. The idealistic Europeans cooperated by insisting that the Turkish army be firmly subjugated to civilian control so as never again to take over the government as had been the case repeatedly when the civilians allowed too much chaos. (The Geekess witnessed this up close and personal when she lived in Ankara in the early Seventies, ducking bullets as she went to class at a local university.)

A quick wave of arrests of scores of high ranking military officers, both serving and retired, on charges related to a conspiracy of such elaborate and convoluted nature as to rate as very bad fiction finished the job. The admittance of an ever larger number of Islamist recruits from both Anatolia and the urban ghettos filled with displaced Anatolians assured the army became ever more politically reliable, ever more aligned with the political agenda of AKP.

Without the army the diminishing and aging secularist population has little, if any hope of regaining political supremacy. And, absent a secularist, Ataturkian restoration, there is no feasible probability of Turkey being regarded as a civilized state on a par with the other members of NATO.

Erdogan and his supporters have lashed the fortunes and future of their country and fellow citizens firmly to the mast of political Islam. They are convinced that the future has a restored Ottoman Empire and Caliphate in store for them.

Sure, the new, improved Ottoman Empire will be far different from the one which shuffled into oblivion ninety years ago. And, unless firm alliances are made with alternative centers of Islamist power such as Iran and Pakistan, the new AKP version of the Ottoman Empire will be embroiled in war both hot and cold.

It is probable that Ankara and Tehran have an understanding currently. It is probable that the understanding--not unlike the infamous pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in August 1939 has delineated spheres of interest. Again, not unlike the referenced predecessor in cynical exploitation, the understanding will eventually evaporate.

In the meanwhile Turkey can carry the heavy freight in the battle for Iran's bomb. It can also do the pioneering in the fomenting of ever greater quantities of hate Israel sentiment among the useful fools and leftists of the West.

The Erdogan rejection of the West and embrace of the mullahs of Tehran is obvious enough to be visible even to the astigmatic Barack Obama. There is no profit in trying to cozen, bribe, or otherwise make nice to the political Islamists of Ankara. The only road to profit is the one which takes Turkey out of NATO.

The sooner Turkey is invited to hit the highway out of NATO the better for all hands. If nothing else, consider just how much information of a sensitive sort flows from Brussels to Ankara and thence (perhaps) to Tehran. Really, from a purely security standpoint, having Turkey in NATO today makes as much sense as would having Mussolini's Italy as one of the planners of D-Day.