A Turkish headache for the West

[Nergal]

 

Turkey matters to the West but the question now being asked in Washington and in several European capitals is "just how much?"

Some US commentators go even further, wondering if Turkey should rightly be described as a strategic ally of the United States at all.

Turkey is a prominent member of Nato. Its military bases are important for current US air operations in the Middle East.

It straddles a huge swathe of territory on Nato's eastern flank, at a time when Russia's resurgence means the Black Sea region is of growing strategic importance.

Turkey is also among the European Union's most important eastern neighbours. Its progress towards joining the EU may have badly stalled, not least due to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's growing authoritarianism.

But Ankara remains a vital partner for Europe, playing a crucial role in helping to stem the flow of migrants westwards. Turkey itself is host to more than 3.5 million refugees from the fighting in neighbouring Syria.

President Erdogan is facing simultaneous economic and diplomatic crises that could further damage the foundations of his relationship with Washington and hence Nato.

The economic problems may be largely of his own making: a dash for growth, fuelled by major construction projects, all funded by loans.

But the row with the US - which focuses in part on the imprisonment of a US pastor, Andrew Brunson, accused by the Turks of activities hostile to the state - has become a battle of wills between President Erdogan on one side and President Donald Trump on the other.

And punitive US economic sanctions are doing further damage to Turkey's fragile economy.

So how bad could it get? Might Turkey's membership of Nato be called into question? Nato actually has no mechanism to expel an existing member: Ankara would have to decide that it wanted to leave.

During the Cold War, Turkey, with its huge armed forces, was always the anchor of Nato's eastern flank. In more recent times it has also been a significant contributor to the alliance's mission in Afghanistan.