-refugees, refugees, refugees
-2nd biggest military in NATO
-Incirlik Airbase
-Access and control to Syria
-Radar and other intel gathering equipment looking over Russia's belly and Middle East
-blocking Russian access to the Med
-human intelligence
Refugee handling is an EU problem, not really NATO. While there's substantial overlap, the US isn't going to negotiate with that in mind. And there's nothing stopping the EU from continuing to cut a refugee-handling-for-money deal if Turkey exits NATO.
Airbases can still be leased, although it would depend on how badly relations deteriorated.
I think Turkeys biggest fear would be that NATO members stop quietly ignoring Turkey's bombing of PKK bases inside Iraqi Kurdistan and Syria. If Turkey wasn't in NATO, there's nothing stopping the US or others from giving various Kurdish groups weaponry which could threaten Turkey's air superiority (AA missiles, not jets). This would make Turkey's war against the PKK internally a lot more difficult.
So, I do think Turkey will recognize that it will suffer greatly outside NATO, and will take at least basic steps to preserve membership. But we'll see.
This is now about Erdogan, Does Erdogan need NATO more than NATO needs Turkey? That's the question. Dictators tend not to care or stay rational in the "normal" sense of things.
If this coup was planned by Erdogan, then he really has good game and will play a long con on being a member of NATO while doing what he wants.
Well, except Iraq.
That is, there is considerable tension between Iraqi Kurdistan and the central government (the fact that Kurdistan has its own army and the Iraqi army is banned from Kurdistan is one of the irritants on the Iraqi side -- the US arming the Kurds in a way that would make them able to effectively resist Turkey would not be a good thing for the internal stability of Iraq. Or for Iraqi-Kurdistan relations if it happened after Kurdistan broke away completely, like it has shown some interest in doing recently.)
(Actually, reinforcing Iraqi Kurdistan -- and even moreso an ex-Iraqi Kurdistan -- this way would also escalate tensions with Iran, Syria -- and because of the last -- probably also Russia.)
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17245.htm
on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France, on the territory of Turkey or on the islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer
And interestingly that therefore makes it the only member for which there is a clear process for specifically revoking Article 5 protection.
As for the rest, Turkey does need NATO
- If it does not want Russia to go frontally against them
- If it wants to keep Cyprus
- If it wants western nations to not help Kurd territories
Leaving NATO would result in territorial losses for Turkey. It would be probably good for the russian sphere of influence, but the Cold War is over, and if Turkey can't be an ally anymore, let's not shoehorn it into the alliance. When will we learn the lessons from Saudi Arabia?
I wonder if the best outcome for democracy in Turkey would have been a attempted coup which resulted in Erdogan's death before it failed. I don't know of any Turkish politicians who would have been able to build a dictatorship as successfully as Erdogan.
That's usually not how these things go in Turkey. In 1997, there was a non-violent military coup because of a situation very similar to what we've seen with Erdogan. A few months later, I spent the summer in Istanbul, drinking beer, discussing any and all politics with Turks, and chasing Turkish girls in a decidedly open and free environment. Most Turks I spoke to (admittedly tended to be secular) were quite glad that the coup had taken place and that the Islamist Party (Refah, or "Welfare" Party) was subsequently banned.
Incidentally, at the time the Refah party was banned, Erdogan was an active, up-and-coming party member.
In any case, few of the military coups that have occurred in modern Turkish history have been violent (1980 was significant exception) and none have resulted in a long-term dictatorship (1980 resulted in a 3-year military dictatorship).
Ironically, since 1980, it has been democracy, not military intervention, that has now permitted a dictatorship to gain a foothold in Turkey.
That's not a given. Turkey's military has staged quite a few coups over the years and that's really part of their purpose in the Turkish government order. After a few years power usually transitions back to normal democratic elections.
When I was younger, I thought of democracy as the end-all and be-all of political philosophies, since that the progressive march toward of the perfection of democracy is what was emphasized in school. As an adult, I've come to believe that a nation's true value is in to the extent it promotes the liberty and welfare of all its inhabitants, including minorities.
By this metric, my country, the United States, often viewed as one of the world's "great democracies", is doing relatively poorly.
It's the standard problem of having a democracy that votes to end democracy. In America, we get Trump, which is debatably similar...
It's easy to want a dictator when you're in the majority, they hold the beliefs you do and you're probably going to not be the groups oppressed (at first). Raw complete democracy doesn't have a good way of dealing with a majority wanting to repress a minority. So founders (at least smart ones) put checks in to balance that, in the US it takes the form of the Supreme Court and in Turkey they have the military as a final ultimate check.
edit: Source for my original post (can't edit now) of the history of Turkish coups: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/04/201244728146879...
Fareed Zakaria has a great book, The Future of Freedom, where he discusses, among other things, the perils of illiberal democracy. The bit that really stuck in my head is his argument that the impartial judge is a more important institution than the ballot box.
Man has lived under undemocratic regimes for almost all of recorded history. It is the human condition. It is more important to defend civilization and order against barbarism and chaos, than it is to ensure that the majority rules. Liberal values and constitutional government preceded true democracy by hundreds of years in the West. Why do we expect otherwise anywhere else?
(1) The Sunni version of Iran under the Ayatollahs is called "Saudi Arabia".
(2) Assuming the attribution of the coup to the Gülen movement is accurate, it would likely not have been a "liberal, pro-Western, secular military junta" but instead an "quasi-liberal, pro-Western, relatively-tolerant-but-still-Islamist military junta".
Saudi Arabia is a tough situation. The House of Saud is the only thing standing between the radical imams and total power.
The future of the Middle East looks very dark right now. Egypt is the only large power where the forces of order and civilization are winning.
No.
Also the lion's share of economic and scientific advancement.
For some reason democracy is being treated as the all encompassing headline act and receives applause tenuously related to its performance.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-04/turkish-g...
Who knows how this is gonna end? Pass the popcorn...
> Turkish Armed Forces see themselves as the guardians of the secular and unitary nature of the Republic along with Atatürk's reforms and have intervened by taking over the government three times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Turkey#Influen...
Speculation - would Ukraine get attacked last year if it was a full NATO member?
It would have already been attacked before that. That's actually why Ukraine was attacked in fact. Putin doesn't want NATO expanding up to Russia's doorstep.
I understand the Russian concern about NATO expansion even if I don't agree with their direct aggression.
I wouldn't bet on Turkey ever leaving or being kicked out.
I'll take your bet. It's a trick question because Greece was not expelled from NATO when it was under a military dictatorship, and so I am sure Turkey would not be either.
Well, Erdogan's regime is threatening to end its friendship with the US if Gülen isn't turned over, so any termination of the relationship may not come from the NATO side.
I think I read that Kerry had said something like "sure, we'll extradite him...if you have evidence that he committed any crimes." Since any evidence they do have is likely to be pretty weak, this seems like a classic "remember that USA is the boss of you" move. A reasonable Turkish leader wouldn't call that bluff, but Ergodan seems to be slipping deeper and deeper into paranoia and autocratic madness.
I don't follow how you got from A to B there; I don't read Kerry's position as asserting American authority or sovereignty at all, to be honest. It's a standard for extradition which is a sovereignty affair as well as a legal due process consideration in our system of government, but not in the manner of asserting American authority to 'boss' Turkey around.
We refuse the occasional extradition to the UK, for example, despite having a special relationship with them and not tending to diplomatically 'boss' them around, so I'm not following your thinking here. (It's not a great example because of the 2003 treaty we have with them, but the point stands about refusals.)
I'm also not following how you arrived at the American position being a bluff.
I skimmed the treaty. It does appear that evidence that the person sought has committed a crime is a requirement for an extradition request, in which case Kerry is merely saying "we're not going to exceed our legal authority just because you asked us to". It is also a requirement, at least in most circumstances that the evidence be for a crime that is punishable by detention for more than one year (i.e. a felony) in both countries.
The US needs Turkey for the war in Syria. And the US is not about to move all those nukes elsewhere.
I believe they're all gravity bombs, which makes them mostly symbolic, just like the nukes we store in other NATO countries.