"Time to Kick Turkey Out of NATO?" Topic

"The case for evicting Turkey from NATO got stronger this week.

First, the United States announced the backing of a border security force drawn mainly from the People's Protection Units (YPG) in Rojava, the quasi-independent Kurdish region in northeastern Syria along the Turkish border. Then Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he will "strangle" that American-backed force "before it's even born." Russia, Iran and Syria's Assad regime are standing with Erdogan.

The YPG, along with the multiethnic Syrian Democratic Forces which the YPG dominates, are the only armed groups indigenous to Syria that are willing and able to take on ISIS and win, and they're the only significant armed faction in Syria's dizzying civil war that isn't ideologically hostile to the West. In October of last year, they finally liberated Raqqa, the "capital" of the ISIS "caliphate," while the Russian and Syrian militaries were busy pounding rebels instead in the west…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Yep. Long overdue.

Dan

Easier said than done because we need Incirlik.

30,000 "terrorists" along their boarder? Yeah. Big , tough Turks are gonna do what the Turks are good at: Kill women and children along with those "Terrorists".

Yeah, they should be kicked out of NATO. After we destroy the army they send to kill those 30,000 "terrorists".

Why do "we" need Incirlik? Nearby Cyprus etc won't do?

Keeping Turkey in NATO is more about the Mediterranean members wanting to keep the Soviet… er I mean Russian Black Sea Fleet bottled up incase of a shooting war with Russia.

That being said almost anything stationed in Incirlik could easily be moved to Cyprus or even Greece.

Yep, boot them. They are going down a path we cannot and should not condone.

Kicking them out of NATO may cause them to begin seeking a more ethno-religious path in the middle east.

Well we've moved our nuclear weapons out of Incirlik…

Kicking them out of NATO may cause them to begin seeking a more ethno-religious path in the middle east.

Seems like Turkey in recent years has already started down that path.

To be clear; I feel that Turkey's incursion into Syria against Kurdish forces we are allied with is wrong and foolish but;

Turkey is a very complicated country with a variety of political and ethno-religous factors impacting its decision making process. The Turkish people have developed a pride in their heritage and an insecurity at the same time. Attaturk (Mustafa Kamal) set up modern Turkey as a secular nation more aligned with the European powers at the time than with the Middle Eastern elements of the former Ottoman Empire. However, while the major cities were for the most part more 'European' and secular in their attitude, the rural areas of the country, especially in the East and South, held on to their middle eastern customs and were generally more devote in their approach to religion. They were initially invited into NATO to secure NATO's southern flank as we all know. However, Turkey for many years sought to be closer aligned to Europe and especially the EU but western European governments excluded Turkey on the grounds that their economy wasn't stable enough nor was their human rights record. This offended Turkey since they could point to countries such as Greece and Spain for their financial issues and human rights problems in the 60's & 70's. They felt they were being treated as less than equal since they were not a christian majority country. In the eighties and nineties, as Turkey's manufacturing economy grew along with the rest of Europe, they began to see migrations of its rural non-secular citizens into the predominately secular cities, thereby shifting the balance of power in the voting booth. As the Western European nations began shunning Turkey more openly once the Warsaw Pact became less of the threat, groups that wanted to Turkey to be less secular began to find more receptive ears. Also, countries who have much to gain from a Turkey not allied with the west, such as Iran, China, and Russia, have been promoting an anti-western agenda in Turkey with a fair amount of success. Our current disagreement with Turkey comes from their long time struggle with Kurdish separatists. The Kurds have waged a very violent terror campaign in Turkey for more than fifty years. And there is a lot of animosity on both sides. It has been a nasty fight with casualties on both sides. Can you imagine how the USA would feel if Russia started arming Mexican drug lords along the border with no assurances that those drug lords wouldn't use their weapons against Americans? As for the Armenians; that is not a shining moment in Turkish history but understandably, their version of events is not as black and white as the Armenians promote. The Armenians state that they were defenseless and simply trying to live their lives when attacked by Turks simply because of their religion and ethnicity. Not exactly true, as the Armenians sensing the collapse of Ottoman Empire wanted their own country and began a guerilla war against the Ottoman Turks. The Turks for their part, reacted with a ruthlessness that by twentieth century standards was not acceptable. Armenian villages that sided with the Ottomans were for the most part left alone and eventually assimilated into the new Turkey, those who resisted or objected to the Ottomans were displaced. The Ototman Turk's did take part in massacres but most Armenians who died, died due to starvation, exposure and illness caused by the Ottoman driven displacements in some of the most unfriendly terrain in the region. It was genocide by today's standards but what galls the Turks is they see it as no different than what the USA was doing as little as twenty-five years earlier with the natives of America. And it was under the Ottoman government and not Modern Turkey. This is not an excuse for nor a denial of the holocaust the Armenians faced but to the Turks it's another example of dual standards when dealing with them. The west has been very willing to accept Turkey's assistance when it was needed such as during the Korean conflict or more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. So we really should try to understand their viewpoint in dealing with the Kurds. The current Prime Minister of Turkey, Erdogan is taking the Turks in a direction that up until recently the majority of Turks had rejected but like many nations lately, they are falling pry to nationalistic sentiment that is bringing out the worst in nations. So do you kick a country out of NATO for rantings of nationalistic leader who is looking out for only what he perceives to be the interests of his own country without regard for the impact on others? If so, NATO has a couple decisions to make when it comes to expelling members.

People need to do a little more research on Turkey before making asinine comments about "killing women and children." Drivel like that sounds like the same craps many folks say when referring to US airstrikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.

It is time Turkey is out. They are going to be a problem if they are allowed to stay.

Private: you seems to forgot that Turkey has been a colonial power for the last 1000 years and that it seems that they keep the same spirit today. They were able to get rid of Armenian and Greek that were living their before the Turks settled but it seems that it is a little more difficult with the Kurds.

Also your summary seems to completely bypass the invasion of Cyprus (another Turk colony) which by itself makes impossible the integration of Turkey in the EU (being almost at war with 2 EU members having veto power).

I'm always very amused when Turkey is complaining about Israel behavior considering the History of the country.

USAFpilot-
I was holding on tightly to my Sheldon Cooper sarcasm sign when I typed my above post.

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Enjoy your thread Private Matter…. thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand