- Erdogan withdrew his demand that the alliance designate Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria terrorists
- Turkish president had threatened to veto NATO’s defense plan for the Baltics and Poland unless
ANKARA: NATO leaders forced Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan into a
humiliating climbdown on Wednesday over his demand that the alliance
designate Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria terrorists.
Erdogan had earlier been accused of political blackmail after he
threatened to veto NATO’s defense plan for the Baltics and Poland unless
he got his way on the YPG.
But at the conclusion of the alliance’s 70th anniversary summit in
London on Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Turkey
had agreed to approve the plan.
Whether to designate the YPG “a threat” or “a terror group” had not even
been discussed at the leaders’ meeting, and disagreements over the
issue should not undermine the gains made in the global fight against
terrorism, Stoltenberg said. “Despite differences, the allies keep
uniting around their core mission, which is protecting each other.”
Many in Turkey wondered what Erdogan had obtained in return for
withdrawing his veto, but Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda denied
any quid pro quo, and welcomed the plan as “a huge achievement for the
whole region.”
Burak Bilgehan Ozpek, a political scientist from TOBB University in
Ankara, told Arab News: “Removing the blockage is a good decision, but
just before the summit Erdogan seemed to be trying to use the NATO forum
to solve Turkey’s own foreign policy challenges, which was totally
wrong.”
If such tactics ever influenced NATO’s decision-making processes, the
alliance could no longer be considered purely a military defense
project, instead becoming a mechanism for political wrangling between
member countries, Ozpek said.
In the summit’s final declaration, NATO said: “Terrorism in all its
forms and manifestations remains a persistent threat to us all. State
and non-state actors challenge the rules-based international order.”
That will interest Turkish decision-makers, said Karol Wasilewski, an
analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs in Warsaw. The
aim of Erdogan’s veto gambit was “probably to break Turkey’s isolation
over the Syrian issue,” he told Arab News.
“If Turkey … gets at least an assurance that the allies will tone down
their criticism of the Syrian operation, or maybe even consider minor
financial support for the safe zone, Turkey could argue that the bargain
paid off,” he said.