Je Suis Turkey: Islam, Blue Homeland, and NATO

Five years ago, satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo printed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that prompted two gunmen to carry out a deadly attack on the newspaper’s office in Paris. The attack marked the beginning of a deadly year of Islamist terrorism in France that would claim the lives of over 200 people. The blasphemous cartoons highlighted contentious differences between French and Muslim society that remain unsolved in 2020. In the last month and a half, Islamic terrorists have killed six in France’s largest cities. Two were stabbed outside of the Charlie Hebdo headquarters, a teacher was beheaded after showing blasphemous comics in class, and three were stabbed next to a church in Nice. These attacks reveal a cultural chasm between the free speech that we are so accustomed to in the West and the blasphemy laws that are all too prevalent in the East, as well as the international ramifications of this schism that remain unresolved.

While terrorists in 2015 and 2016 were met with “Je Suis Charlie,” a campaign of international solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and in support of free expression, the recent wave of terror attacks have prompted a harsher response from French authorities. Emmanuel Macron met these attacks with a stalwart “Ils ne passeront pas,” a French slogan from the First World War meaning “They shall not pass.” Macron has made very clear his intentions to protect French society from the dangers of a religion he claims “is in crisis.” Macron’s proposals to prevent radicalization in French Muslim communities include cutting all foreign funding of Islamic schools, regulating imams the state deems too radical, banning home schooling, and not allowing swimming pools to segregate on the basis of sex. 

He claims that these policies are aimed at combatting Islamist separatism, not Islam itself, but his reasoning has been rejected by the Muslim world. Many have labeled Macron’s rhetoric as Islamophobic, and protests against the French president’s actions have broken out in Pakistan, Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey, and Northern Syria. Protesters have called for a boycott of France, and some leaders, such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani PM Imran Khan, have joined in and publicly condemned Macron’s stance on Islam. In response to comments by Erdogan that he characterized as “declarations of violence,” Macron banned the Gray Wolves, a radical Turkish nationalist group, recalled the French ambassador to Turkey, and threatened Ankara with sanctions. 

Such conflict with the West is nothing new to Erdogan, whose regime has been characterized by a strong pan-Islamist ideology that drives its active foreign policy. Turkey occupies a unique role on the world stage as a link between the East and the West. Geographically, this is obvious: Turkey sits between the Mediterranean and Black Sea, allowing easy access to three continents. Turkey’s secular democracy also stands out as an oddity in the Middle East, despite the fact that both of these qualities have regressed under Erdogan’s rule. This top-down cultural and institutional backsliding has caused many to raise questions over Turkey’s final attribute that makes it unique in the Muslim world: its NATO membership.

While NATO is far from a globally supported organization due to its controversial interventions and soldiers often implicated in war crimes, there is no doubt a strategic cohesion that has kept the alliance united and functional for over 70 years. During the Cold War, this unifying objective was containment of the USSR, and, since the 90s, it has been bound by opposition to Russian, Iranian, and, more recently, Chinese influence abroad. Western leaders have never been coy about the fact that NATO exists to protect their societal structure: free markets, free elections, and free expression. Perhaps no country exemplifies these values as much as France. A capitalist republic through and through, French society is held together by its dedication to the European Union as well as its unique idea of laïcité. Laïcité translates as secularism and is a founding value that underpins French society. Laïcité is not just the separation of church and state, rather it is a mandate for the state to use its power to uphold secular society. It is very much the intention of the state to impose secularism on all aspects of civil society, an objective that has been difficult to reconcile for many Muslim migrants that have arrived in France the past decade. Additionally, the fact that many refugees came to Europe through Turkey complicates this discussion. Turkey’s border with Syria was porous through the early stages of the Syrian civil war, allowing millions to escape to Turkey and then cross the sea into Greece, Italy, and Western Europe. The start of the refugee crisis marks the start of Turkey’s increased friction with Europe and a renewed discussion of religion’s role in Western society. 

When the Syrian Revolution evolved into a civil war in 2011, no one predicted the decade-long bloodshed that would ensue and the political ripples it would have across the globe. Turkey, along with the Gulf states, the US, and the UK, was responsible for arming and training millions of Syrian rebels from 2013-2015, but Russian and Iranian intervention prevented regime change from occurring. Over 10 million people have been displaced by the civil war, half becoming refugees. Conflicts in Iraq, Yemen, and Libya also contributed to mass migration out of the Middle East during the early and mid 2010s. 

While these refugees posed a serious crisis for Europe, many forget that they were first a crisis for Turkey. Over three million Syrian refugees live in Turkey, and their existence has shaped much of Turkey’s domestic political discourse. Although Erdogan has been blamed for escalating the Syrian conflict and allowing refugees to flee across the border for too long, his decision to intervene in Syria set the stage for future Turkish international action. 

Despite being a NATO member, Turkey’s foreign policy is detached from the larger goals of the alliance. Since the start of the decade, Turkish foreign policy has been driven by the realist doctrine of Mavi Vatan, or Blue Homeland. Blue Homeland is an expansionist ideology (which some have dubbed “neo-Ottoman”) that has led to frequent confrontation in the Eastern Mediterranean between Turkey and Greece, a fellow NATO member. Turkey disputes Greco and Cypriot maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean due to recently discovered natural gas in the Levantine basin that could boost Turkey’s faltering economy. Additionally, Turkey’s alliance with Libya’s Tripoli government has made their access across the Mediterranean to Africa even more important. The UN-recognized Tripoli government, which many have criticized for its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, has been in conflict with forces supporting the warlord Khalifa Haftar since 2014. Turkish drones and Turkmen mercenaries from Northern Syria have been sent to fight Haftar’s forces who are supported by Egypt, the UAE, Russia, and France, all countries invested in preventing the spread of Islamist power.

Turkey and Russia have found themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield in wars between Sunni Islamists and their opponents in Syria, Libya, and most recently, Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Both sides have employed mercenaries and sold weapons to factions in these conflicts. The Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkish-backed coalition of Syrian rebel groups, has been sent to fight in Libya and Azerbaijan, while Russia’s private military contractors, known as Wagner Group, have been fighting in Libya and Syria since 2015. 

One may look at these conflicts and conclude that Turkey is faithfully executing its role as a NATO member by opposing Russian interests. The reality is more complicated than that. Russia and Turkey have been engaging in joint-patrols of the M4 highway in Syria since 2018 and played key roles in brokering recent peace deals in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh as a result of military victories by Erdogan’s allies. In 2019, after the US refused to sell Turkey the F-35 fighter jet, Turkey made a deal with Russia for a shipment of S-400 missile defense systems. Although this arrangement brought Erdogan dangerously close to being the target of US sanctions, President Trump held back from penalizing one of his only allies on the world stage. Erdogan’s foreign policy has made clear that his only allegiances are to his constituents, Turkish power, and global Islam. These priorities are far from mutually exclusive; in fact, they often overlap. Turkey’s decision in July to revert the Hagia Sophia to a mosque is a prime example of how Erdogan has consolidated domestic support and bolstered his case to be viewed as the leader of the Islamic world despite objections from Western governments. Turkish policy, both foreign and domestic, has drawn much criticism from NATO allies and brought attention to NATO’s third largest member having an agenda of its own.

It’s no secret that the Trump administration is culpable in enabling Erdogan’s ambitions. In farcical fashion, ex-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had to retroactively register as a foreign agent after it was discovered that the Turkish Government paid him over $500,000 for lobbying work in the run-up to the 2016 election. In 2018, Trump’s decision to reroute American soldiers stationed along the Syria-Turkey border made way for Operation Olive Branch, a Turkish incursion to set up a “safe-zone” between the Turkish border and cities in northern Syria occupied by Kurdish factions. Areas along the Turkish border were occupied by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who Erdogan accused of being linked to the terrorist-designated Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that the Turkish government has been in sporadic conflict with since the 1980s. On November 7 2020, US envoy to Syria James Jeffrey, a figure viewed as instrumental in sanctioning Operation Olive Branch, resigned. Jeffrey’s resignation and Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election make it clear that the United States is on the precipice of moving away from its conciliatory approach towards Erdogan. In August, footage from 2019 resurfaced of President-elect Joe Biden declaring his intentions to support the remaining members of the Turkish opposition. “Not by a coup. Not by a coup.” he says, referencing the failed 2016 coup to remove Erdogan from power, “but by the electoral process.” Turkey’s next general election is in 2023, but due to the sweeping crackdowns on opposition leadership and media by the Erdogan regime following 2016, along with Erdogan’s popular pan-Islamist ideology, it seems unlikely that he will be unseated.

So, if Erdogan is likely to maintain power in Turkey, it begs the question: what does Turkey’s future in NATO look like? With the US wrapped up in an intense election, and Trump’s relationship with Erdogan unambiguously placatory, NATO’s de facto leader has had little to say about ratcheting tensions between two of NATO’s most influential members. Under a Biden administration, this would likely change. The President-elect has been a vocal critic of the Erdogan administration domestically and abroad. He condemned Erdogan’s incursion into Northern Syria in 2018 and called out Turkey for its role in the recent Azerbaijani aggression in Nagorno-Karabakh. Biden claims he will be an international advocate for the attributes that made Turkey a NATO member in the first place: its secularism and democracy. Macron may champion secularism, but his support for dictators such as Haftar and Sisi show that he is willing to put democracy on the back burner to do so. And while Erdogan claims to be an international proponent of democracy, his brotherhood with Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev reveals that his real motives are religious goals and realist calculations. The question of whether or not Turkey’s rogue actions will prompt its removal from NATO is unlikely to be answered before the 2023 election. But if Turkey continues to increase its conflicts with NATO members and backsliding intensifies, it would not be surprising if either party decides the alliance will be more restrictive than advantageous in the coming decade. 

Will Pease ‘23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at wpease@wustl.edu.