Turkey’s two-faced ‘sultan’ is no friend of the west. It’s time to play hardball
That Turkey is a “vital strategic ally” of the west is the sort of truism on which people such as Joe Biden and Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, are raised. Yet what if the old saw no longer holds true? What if Turkey’s leader, exploiting this notion, betrays western interests in a pretence of partnership? Should not that leader be treated as a liability, a threat – even ostracised as an enemy?
As the most important Turkish elections in a generation move towards a febrile climax in May, and as the western democracies contemplate critical choices in Ukraine, over Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and in Iran, Syria and Israel-Palestine, these dilemmas boil down to one basic question: is it time to admit that two-faced Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is no friend of the west – and punish him accordingly?
Erdoğan’s plans to launch another armed invasion of northern Syria fly in the face of US-led efforts to support the anti-Bashar al-Assad democratic opposition and suppress Islamist terrorism. In reality, destabilising incursions and occupations of the Syrian and Iraqi borderlands are yet another extension of Erdoğan’s obsessive war on the Kurds. His prospective rapprochement with Damascus further undercuts western security policy.