Turkey, NATO and Alliance Membership

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

Earlier this year, Finland and Sweden applied to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But both of their applications were held up, due to an objection by Turkey. NATO being a mutual security alliance, any one member can prevent new countries from joining. To fully understand the background dynamics at play here and to explain the agreement that the three countries recently signed, allowing the applications to move forward, Lawfare Publisher David Priess spoke with two people who have covered Turkey from a multitude of angles.

Nick Danforth is the author of The Remaking of Republican Turkey: Memory and Modernity since the Fall of the Ottoman Empire. He has also covered U.S.-Turkish relations for the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Bipartisan Policy Center. Rachel Rizzo is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Europe Center, where she focuses on European security, NATO, and the trans-Atlantic relationship.

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Transcript

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0:36.0	Well, Turkey has a pretty interesting history with NATO and its allies.
0:43.0	I like to think of it as sort of a can't live with them, can't live without them sort of situation.
0:47.0	It joined NATO in 1952. It sits astride the Middle East and the Black Sea.
0:53.0	It also hosts a major air base where the US stores nuclear weapons.
0:59.0	So it's clearly our strategic interest to I think have Turkey aligned with the West
1:07.0	and a member of NATO as frustrating as they can be.
1:11.0	Turkey realizes this. They realize that they hold this position within the alliance.
1:16.0	And they've thrown their way around many times. This isn't the first time.
1:22.0	I'm David Price, publisher of LawFair, and this is the LawFair podcast,
1:28.0	July 6, 2022.
1:31.0	You've probably heard that Finland and Sweden have applied to join the North Atlantic Treaty organization.
1:37.0	You might have even heard that their applications were held up a bit because Turkey objected to them
1:43.0	and NATO being a mutual security alliance.
1:47.0	Anyone member can prevent new countries from joining.
1:51.0	But you might not understand the full dynamics behind Turkey's obstinence and the annoyance that it has triggered in other NATO members governments.
2:00.0	To discuss this background, I was joined by two people with different angles on it all.
	...

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