BRUSSELS:Turkey's Syria offensive has created fresh divisions within NATO and, whilethere is no chance of Ankara being thrown out, the crisis adds to pressures onthe alliance as it heads towards a crucial summit in December. Ankara's assaulton Kurdish forces that played a key role in the fight against the Islamic Stategroup has drawn widespread international criticism and prompted some NATO countriesto suspend new arms sales.
President Donald Trump has authorized sanctions on Turkish leaders andre-imposed steel tariffs over the assault, which began last week afterWashington said it would withdraw US forces from northern Syria. Coming amidgrowing Western unease at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's strongman style ofgovernment, and after Ankara pressed ahead with the purchase of S-400 missilesystems from Russia in the face of vehement protests from Washington and NATO,the current crisis adds to Turkey's increasing isolation within the alliance.
The normally guarded NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has repeatedlyvoiced his "serious concerns" about the military operation, and therisk that it could pose to the fight against IS. Alliance defense ministerswould be keen to discuss the matter when they meet in Brussels next week, hesays.
No expulsionmechanism
US DefenseSecretary Mark Esper has said he will use the meeting to press allies to take"collective and individual diplomatic and economic measures" topunish Turkey for its "egregious" actions. But calls from somequarters for Turkey to be suspended or even kicked out of NATO will leadnowhere, experts say, because no such mechanism exists in the alliance.
"NATO is limited by what it can do formally to punish Turkey because allNATO decisions have to be made unanimously, thus Turkey can block any decisionsthat criticize or sanction it," Jorge Benitez, a senior fellow at theAtlantic Council, told AFP. Even if it were practically possible, it isdoubtful whether on balance NATO allies would want to eject Turkey, given itsvital strategic location on the edge of the Middle East, bordering Iran andacross the Black Sea from Russia -- and given Erdogan's recent drift towardsMoscow's orbit.
"But the other allies can still punish Turkey by individually withholdinginformation from Ankara and choosing to informally meet together without Turkeyat the table," Benitez added. Off-the-book measures of this sort weretaken privately against Portugal at NATO following a coup in 1974, Benitezsaid, while the US imposed a three-year arms embargo on Turkey following itsintervention in Cyprus the same year.
Europeancountries including Germany, France, Britain and the Netherlands have announcedthey will suspend new arms sales to Turkey in response to the Syria operation.But there are already doubts about how much practical effect this will have.Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn has pointed out that "Erdoganis not waiting for Europe to provide him with weapons". Some observershave suggested that if Europe is serious about putting pressure on Erdogan, amore effective tactic would be to tell citizens not to take holidays in Turkey,hitting the country's vital tourism industry.
Russian orbit
But with Erdoganalready seemingly disengaging with the West and drifting ever closer to RussianPresident Vladimir Putin, NATO countries will want to balance their desire totake a stand over Syria with Turkey's longer-term value to the alliance."On balance it's still better to have Turkey as a nominal ally than as apotential adversary, probably teaming up with Russia -- that's the unpalatablesituation that NATO finds itself in now," Elisabeth Braw, a seniorresearch fellow at the RUSI think tank in London, told AFP.
As a military alliance with a clear mission -- the defense of its members'territory -- rather than a political project like the EU, NATO can take a morepragmatic, hard-headed view of crises like the present one, Braw said."Throughout its history NATO has had to put up with a lot of unattractivebehavior by its different member states and has still remained this successfulmilitary alliance," she said. But with NATO already struggling withinternal divisions -- not least Trump's repeated goading of allies for notliving up to defense spending commitments -- the latest crisis sets the stagefor a dramatic summit in London in December. - AFP