Turkey, NATO, and the Uses of Authoritarian Legitimacy
What Turkey wanted from NATO has changed, and so has what NATO is and represents. The 36th summit hosted in Ankara by a leader who jails his rivals, shows both at once.
Next week, Ankara will host NATO’s 36th Summit.
It is an important meeting mostly because Trump threatened to quit NATO, as he has threatened to quit almost every alliance and treaty the US is party to. He also let it be known that he would only turn up because his good friend Erdogan is hosting! Masallah to this bromance.
A couple of years ago it was Erdogan who caused trouble by refusing to accept Sweden as a member; now he has become the glue, the linchpin that holds the alliance attached to Trump.
The conventional account of Turkey’s NATO accession in February 1952 is a security story. That is, the Soviet Union had made territorial demands on Turkey in 1945, the Truman Doctrine followed in 1947, and membership in the Atlantic alliance provided the formal guarantee that American power would stand behind Turkish borders. This is not wrong, but it is incomplete.
Turkey’s NATO journey
Turkey was twice refused N…
