Turkey’s Drift From The West: From Transactionalism To Hostility

Turkey’s relations with its Western allies, in a downward spiral since 2013, are at a breaking point. Ankara not only accuses Washington of plotting last year’s abortive coup, but also blames it for arming and supporting Kurdish rebels that it sees as an existential threat. Bitter diplomatic spats unfold with one European country after another. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has already demoted Turkey’s strategic relations with Western partners to transactional ones, appears to be taking a new stance of outright hostility. His aggression is ideological, and here to stay.

Last month, a weeklong showdown between Berlin and Ankara culminated in the Germans asking Brussels to suspend negotiations to modernize Turkey’s Customs Union deal with the European Union. Erdogan, after ranting about Germany’s Nazi history, accused German businesses of sponsoring terror against his country. Days earlier, Turkey’s semi-official Anadolu Agency produced a map exposing secret U.S. military positions in Syria, and Erdogan now seeks to buy Russian S-400 missile defense batteries for Turkey, a NATO member.

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