In the run up to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's campaign to win a constitutional referendum this April, rhetorical vitriol between Turkey and EU countries reached historic highs, including accusations that Dutch and German politicians were “Nazi remnants.”. Now, a row over the access of German parliamentarians to Turkey's critical Incirlik air base has prompted Germany to send most of its forces fighting ISIS in Syria to Jordan, while concerns over Turkey’s decline into authoritarianism have led the European Parliament to vote to end Turkey’s accession process to the EU. The Cipher Brief’s Fritz Lodge spoke with Director of the German Federal Academy for Security Policy in Berlin, Dr. Karl-Heinz Kamp, about the source of this crisis and how deep the split between Turkey, Germany, the EU, and NATO runs.
The Cipher Brief: From the German perspective, what are the roots of the growing diplomatic crisis with Turkey?
Karl-Heinz Kamp: Relations between the European Union and Turkey have been strained for many many years now. It started with the idea of Turkey becoming an EU member, which was brought forward by the EU half-heartedly. Some EU countries actually did not want to begin the accession process, and they have slowed the process down, so at the end of the day, Turkey has felt a little bit betrayed.
However, the most important reason behind the current crisis is the development over the past three years or so of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from a strong proponent of democracy to an increasingly autocratic leader. It’s quite interesting that when Erdogan put Amnesty International activists in jail recently, there was a full page ad – run in American newspapers I believe – saying that it was Amnesty International who wrote a letter of petition to the then-Turkish government to release Erdogan for his political views when he was a political prisoner. Now you have the same Erdogan imprisoning Amnesty activists for criticizing his own behavior.
I think this is the main reason for the crisis so far. That one person has changed the government towards autocracy, basically putting himself at the center of power and neglecting the ideals of the democratic system.
TCB: And that’s behind the EU Parliament vote to stop Turkey’s accession process?
Kamp: This is basically the root for everything. Of course, Turkey has had its complaints and certain EU countries have had their complaints for years, and all of these issues have a grain of truth. But all this should be manageable. I worked for six years in NATO and we always had difficulties with Turkey, as we have difficulties with, for instance, France in NATO. But this almost violent recent outbreak of hostilities from the Turkish side stem from the drastic change in the course of the Turkish government.
TCB: What can you tell me about the showdown over the issue of allowing German parliamentarians to visit Incirlik airbase?
Kamp: Many autocrats – this holds for Russia under Putin just as well as it holds true for Turkey under Erdogan – carry out rhetorical attacks or hostile actions against foreign countries for the benefit of their home audience. With regards to Incirlik, all these provocations, this idea that “I am a strong man and I even dare to stand up to Angela Merkel’s Germany,” are moves by an autocratic regime designed to display strength for its own domestic audience.
The Incirlik issue is not new, they have blocked German parliamentarians from visiting German troops at Incirlik several times now, and this is why at the end of the day, Germany decided to move its troops from Incirlik to Jordan. The different thing now is the issue of parliamentarians visiting the AWACS [Airborne Early Warning and Control] fleet because their stationing in Turkey was not on the basis of a bilateral agreement with the country, it is part of a NATO agreement, so Germany has to be a little more careful there.
But once again, autocrats like Erdogan and Putin constantly have to justify their existence by exhibiting strength, by giving the image of the insurmountable leader, and this generally leads to these kinds of provocation. And of course, at the end of the day, Erdogan knows that NATO may need Turkey more than Turkey needs NATO, and even Germany needs more – especially with regard to refugees – than Turkey needs Germany. This is wrong, by the way, because Turkey is actually economically dependent on Europe.
TCB: What do you think that this AWACS issue and other moves by the Erdogan government – for instance the preliminary agreement to purchase Russian air defense missiles – means for NATO coherence from a European perspective?
Kamp: It depends how it will come out in the end. Turkey already threatened to buy Chinese anti-air systems, and it didn’t do it in the end. I don’t know whether they will eventually buy these Russian SAM systems.
The trouble is that autocrats like Erdogan and Putin do not act very rationally, they are often willing to act against their own interests. You can see this on a number of issues. The annexation of Crimea, for instance, cost Russia a fortune. With regard to Turkey, these provocations against Europe are against its own economic interests. At the peak of the Erdogan attacks against “Nazi German” and the spread of pictures of Angela Merkel with a little Hitler mustache, the Turkish Minister of Finance came to Berlin on the very same day to ask Germany for support.
You have this bizarre sort of split logic, so at the end of the day, even if it does not make sense to buy Russian anti-air systems – either technologically or because of the negative effect on Turkey’s place in NATO – if Erdogan decides to do it, he will do it. At the end of the day, Turkey will pay the price for it because they are already facing economic troubles, especially in tourism, which is declining rapidly. And Turkish industry relies heavily on foreign direct investment. Objectively, Turkey may know that it can gain less from Russia than from NATO or the EU but it could continue on this path nonetheless.
TCB: What would you watch out for as a signal that Turkey is really drifting away from NATO, and what do you make of Jens Stoltenberg’s offer to mediate between Turkey and Germany?
Kamp: Stoltenberg is in a very tricky situation. The future of NATO is constantly in the balance. If you recall before 2014, people were saying that NATO had outlived its usefulness, that it was no longer worth it. Then we had the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and all of a sudden NATO was on top again, we were back in the Article V world. But now we are at a low point once again.
This is not just because of Turkey, it is also the split between the Easterners who claim that NATO should do more in the East, the Southerners, who say that NATO is not doing enough in the South, and so on and so forth. We also have the new U.S. element of President Donald Trump as another possible dividing element. So being confronted with these two or three parallel crises, Stoltenberg is trying to avoid escalation in any of these conflict areas. This is why he is focused on brokering a deal, in order to prevent more bush fires from cropping up.
TCB: What role do you see the U.S. playing? Is the Trump Administration taking an interest in this split?
Kamp: One of the major problems Europeans have – and we didn’t expect this – is the current situation in the U.S. Only the United States has the power and strength to bang the heads together of allies and partners who do not behave nicely, and the U.S. did it a few times with regards to Turkey, when we had very high tensions between Greece and Turkey in the 60s and early 70s. The U.S. was the power that averted war between these allies several times.
However, since the Obama presidency – this has not only happened under President Trump – the U.S. has given up on some aspects of international leadership. This means that on international leadership in general, and NATO in particular, the only power who could really discipline allies who do not follow the consensus in an institution is no longer there. And it will not come back, because the U.S. will be navel-gazing over the next few years. The country is highly divided, which will draw time and energy to domestic fights. That time and energy will be missing in international leadership, and Turkey is only one of the issues that we will see crop up.
