Erdogan Has Laid a Trap in Ankara

The Turkish strongman enters the event with immense leverage and high expectations: Boosting his own standing as a seasoned statesman, if not even functioning as a broker between Europe and the United States, is probably the least important on the list. Securing critical American economic lifelines, including a potential currency swap line; getting Turkey readmitted to U.S. defense supply chains, including the sale of F110 jet engines for Turkey’s KAAN jet program; and forcing Turkey’s integration into the EU’s new defense procurement system, which is valued at a staggering 150 billion euros ($171 billion), are probably at the top of his wish list.

As the geopolitical needs of the moment weigh heavily on policymakers in Europe and Washington, Trump’s agreement with a reporter’s question about whether he would arrive with a “big gift bag” for Erdogan is not typical Trumpian cozying up to strongmen. It is, rather, pure realpolitik—almost Kissingerian in its calculation. There is little else that Trump can do. Why?

Washington’s standing in the region—and indeed, in both regions that Turkey bridges, Europe and the Middle East—is at its lowest point. Alternative security architectures are evolving, and Trump does not appear to have the gravitas to bring the Americans back on board, at least not to the extent that allies in both regions need. Turkey seems to be an integral part of Trump’s vision for the new Middle East, and Washington has few viable alternatives.

Perhaps even more important is the Russian factor. As the Europeans build up their defense capabilities, they desperately need what the Turks can offer. This includes “hard” hardware—such as specific types of ammunition, advanced drone production, and other armament-related manufacturing capacity—as well as “hard” geography. Turkey sits at Russia’s southern flank; projects power deep into the Caucasus; borders Iran; and, of course, controls two major straits.

Add to this a not-unimportant “soft” power—maintaining open lines to Moscow and Tehran, alongside very good relations with Syria—and Turkey appears to be more vital to NATO’s architecture today than it did even during the Cold War.

Yet Turkey has been NATO’s problem child for years. One could point to the fallout over Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 missile defense systems or its protracted holdup of  Sweden’s NATO accession. The erosion of civil rights and the broader state of Turkish democracy under Erdogan remain profound points of contention.

But what will be especially critical at this summit is Ankara’s stance on its own power projection: the “Blue Homeland” doctrine. With this aggressive maritime strategy, Erdogan’s Turkey lays claim to vast swathes of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, providing the ideological fuel for its constant saber-rattling vis-à-vis Greece. It is deeply embedded in Erdogan’s political transformation over the past decade, driven by his alliance with hypernationalist—some would say fascist—factions. A close reading of his speeches reveals this is no peripheral rhetoric; it is a vital component of the glue holding his domestic alliance together. His anti-Israel discourse, on the other hand, as well as his support of Hamas, are older and go back to his own Islamist origins. But saber-rattling vis-à-vis Israel goes down well with the hypernationalists at home as well.

But for Erdogan to get what he wants at the summit, ways to mollify Greece will need to be found, as this NATO and EU member can block crucial trade upgrades and defense cooperation mechanisms. The question is: How can Erdogan afford to dial back the provocations without selling out his hypernationalist base at home?

What outside observers often fail to understand about Erdogan is that he is, fundamentally, a master politician. He is not only a skilled orator and a sharp strategist—capable, to be sure, of major miscalculations, such as the whole of Turkey’s foreign policy in the Middle East during the Arab Spring—but also an expert reader of the domestic political room. He has demonstrated time and again that he knows exactly how to make good use of a crisis. He used the 2016 coup attempt to purge Turkish society to a staggering degree and thus lay the foundations for his “super-presidency.” Astute diplomatic maneuvering in the years since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war made it possible for Erdogan to expand his geopolitical leverage.

If the Blue Homeland doctrine has to take a tactical hit in Ankara to secure his broader objectives—such as in the form of an informal agreement to limit maritime exploration for oil and gas in disputed waters or even a more formal agreement on parts of the maritime borders with Greece—he will compensate for that rhetorically at home. At rallies, he will rail against Western perfidy while simultaneously proclaiming eternal and unimpeded Turkish strength.

Erdogan and his proxies have built up a discursive system about an alleged big “game” that is being played with Turkey’s fate by an unnamed cabal of foreign interests. This narrative rewrites history and can be projected back to include the infamous Treaty of Sèvres, the late Ottoman Empire, or even the whole time since the Crusades. It is framed vaguely enough to include all sorts of countries and personalities—such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former U.S. President Barack Obama, and billionaire George Soros—either as players or as stooges of the true enemies of Turkey and the Muslim world. It often carries heavily antisemitic undertones.

This rhetoric has evolved into a catch-all explanation: the Turkish economy falters and inflation surges—the game. The Gezi protests—the game. The coup attempt of 2016—obviously, the game. But also, often enough, various kinds of domestic opposition will be framed within the game—from the philanthropist Osman Kavala, still imprisoned today, to student protesters, independent journalists, and mainstream political parties. They, too, are portrayed as either willing participants or naïve stooges of the great conspiracy against Turkey.

Erdogan excels at demonization and blame-shifting for his domestic audience, masterfully navigating that narrow space where he can satisfy his base and his hard-line coalition partners at home while still playing ball with his allies abroad. A rebuff from his NATO and EU partners is simply another run-of-the-mill instance of “the game,” destined to become a core staple of his demagogic rhetoric.

You can choose your preferred label for his regime from a veritable cottage industry of terminology: “illiberal democracy,” “ballot-acracy,” “democratorship,” “electoral dictatorship,” “electoral authoritarianism,” or “democratic authoritarianism.” But wherever you place Erdogan on the spectrum from democracy proper to outright dictatorship, the coming months are likely to be crucial for Turkey’s trajectory. Erdogan’s presidential clock runs out in 2028. According to the constitution that he has crafted, nobody is able to hold the Turkish presidency for more than two terms.

If, however, parliament is dissolved before its time, a constitutional loophole allows him to run for a third term. Will Erdogan manage to engineer early elections to become eligible for another term? How will he get there? Will he feel forced to dismantle the last vestiges of Turkish democracy in the process?

Erdogan is facing a classic “exit dilemma”—he simply cannot allow himself to be voted out of office.

The run-up to the Ankara summit has already provided a convenient pretext for a fresh wave of arrests targeting opposition figures. But NATO—much like the EU, the U.N., and other Western-dominated supranational institutions—is structurally ill-equipped to deal with autocratic strongmen. The very methods that these leaders use to consolidate and legitimize their rule transform the standard diplomatic mechanisms at NATO’s disposal into fuel for their domestic propaganda—in this case, the game.

Yet Erdogan’s hypernationalist, grievance-mongering rhetoric will not be enough to secure his position in the long term. The alternatives to his continued, managed success could indeed be dangerous—possible scenarios of a future where he does not get what he needs electorally range from internal unrest to desperate military adventurism in the eastern Mediterranean and a closer alignment with Russia, China, and Iran. Ultimately, the strong-arming that he will employ at the summit, and the concessions that he will inevitably extract, are likely the least dangerous outcomes available to the alliance.

And then there is another dilemma, this one facing NATO: What if Erdogan’s Turkey slides into full-blown authoritarianism? Could the alliance include and function with a consolidated autocratic regime in its ranks? And more importantly, could Washington and Europe ever afford to expel such a Turkey—not that a mechanism to do so even exists?

The most likely outcome is that a workaround will be found to integrate Turkey into the EU’s newly established defense procurement framework, bypassing a potential Greek veto. This, combined with other initiatives—from Trump’s possible “big gift bag” to various financial arrangements designed to stabilize the Turkish economy—might provide Erdogan with enough of the resources that he needs to engineer early elections and secure another term. If that happened, NATO would not have to confront the reality of an authoritarian member state; that dilemma would simply be punted to the next generation of leaders.

Should Erdogan indeed win big at the Ankara summit, it will look like a geopolitical win-win: Europe, Washington, and Erdogan would all get what they sorely need. But it would certainly not be a win for Greece or Israel, where, at the very least, Erdogan’s aggressively hostile rhetoric of the past decade will continue to stoke acute anxieties. It would probably also not be a win for the Turkish people. But the alliance would stand strong—stronger than it has for a while.