Editors at National Review Online explain why they oppose a proposal to supply fighter jets to Turkey.
Despite all the challenges that NATO faces from outside the alliance, the controversy that may come to dominate the ongoing Atlantic Alliance summit in Turkey this week has come from within it.
“We’re going to be taking the sanctions off,” President Trump said of Recep Erdoğan’s Turkey on Tuesday. “It’s time to do that, okay? We don’t want to sanction friends.”
The sanctions Trump referred to are those that were imposed on Turkey under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). Trump himself signed that act into law in 2017 and applied it to Ankara in 2020 after Ankara agreed to purchase advanced Russian anti-aircraft batteries. Those sanctions ejected Turkey from a program that rendered it eligible to purchase America’s most advanced fighter aircraft, the F-35.
Ankara hasn’t abandoned the behaviors that resulted in its sanctioning in the first place. Nevertheless, Trump seems determined to sell F-35s to Turkey, and those sanctions are in his way. On Tuesday, the president said he intends to “consider” allowing Turkey back into the fold. But to hear his administration officials tell it, Trump has already made up his mind.
In advance of this week’s NATO summit, Trump lavished Erdoğan with praise. He’s a “friend” and a “respected leader,” the president insisted, neither of which, we hope, despite some evidence to the contrary, he actually believes. Moreover, according to administration officials, deepening America’s defense ties with Turkey is a geopolitical necessity given its proximity to the Russian menace. Trump “really likes Erdoğan,” onetime U.S. Ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey told Fox News. But beyond their personal rapport, Trump recognizes that Turkey is “essential to maintaining the U.S. perimeter around Eurasia.” …
… All those conditions have convinced the Trump administration to keep Erdoğan’s Turkey close, but there is a limit to the extent to which we can rely on our “closeness” to a country or, more specifically, a leader, who has made it clear for years, in word and in deed, that he is no friend of the West.
