Turkey's NATO Victory: Why Erdogan Is Winning While US Looks Away
Turkey is playing multiple alliances at once-NATO, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt-and the US is basically giving Erdogan a blank check.
Turkey emerged as the clear victor from the recent NATO summit in Ankara, and the US barely noticed. Arakelian points to a troubling pattern: while Washington celebrates its alliance management, Erdogan is simultaneously building a separate strategic architecture that could rival or undermine NATO commitments.
Turkey is operating on multiple levels at once. It maintains full NATO membership and benefits from F-35 commitments (despite S-400 tensions). Simultaneously, it is deepening ties with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt through a loose confederation that resembles a shadow alliance system. More provocatively, Turkey was recently considering joining Saudi Arabia’s mutual defense pact with Pakistan-a nuclear power-raising questions about where Turkish strategic priorities truly lie.
Arakelian criticizes Trump’s uncritical embrace of Erdogan, noting that the US demonstrated capability to pressure Erdogan before (on Syria policy, on the release of a detained evangelical pastor) but has abdicated that leverage. She also identifies a critical problem: the US Ambassador to Turkey, who is ‘in the back pocket of Erdogan’ and simultaneously serves as special envoy to Syria, wields disproportionate influence over regional policy while steering it toward Turkish interests rather than broader US strategy. For NATO and the West to maintain coherence, the US needs to define what it actually wants from Turkey-and then enforce it. Right now, Turkey is getting the benefits of NATO without the constraints, while the US watches its Middle East strategy be shaped by interests that are not aligned with American ones.
Transcript
Christine Arakelian: Well, I mean, if you want to know the winner of the NATO summit in Ankara, it was Turkey. Turkey and Ukraine. I was amazed, and I mean amazed at, how to say, Trump's embrace of Erdogan as being a great friend to the United States, as being a stellar leader. Turkey is obviously extremely important to the United States. Even though I am Armenian, I'm rational enough to know that Turkey should be a strong partner of the United States. But that's a very different matter than Erdogan personally. At that meeting, there was an Istanbul mayor sitting in jail, I think for a little over a year. Nobody cares. Is that Western values? Is NATO about Western values? Because you might want to notice that the opposition candidate is sitting in jail and nobody cares, okay? That should not have escaped Trump's attention. It demanded attention. But, look, Turkey plays its cards well. I mean, you have to hand it to them. In all seriousness, they're simultaneously in NATO. We have a new military, how to say, strategic aggregation, sort of loose confederation between Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi, and Egypt.