“It will take a dramatic turn to bring Turkey back into an unmistakable membership in the transatlantic camp.”

platform. Next NATO summit [OTAN]And the June 14 in Brussels is crucial for NATO: if Joe Biden sets a constructive tone to the discussions, the fact remains that the organization faces a more provocative and political position than that of Turkey, which, for its part, would like to be at an equal distance from the alliance and Moscow.

NATO’s cohesion is severely tested. The June 14 summit, along with the EU-US summit the next day, will be, at least in form, a great relief to European leaders compared to the past four years: the United States, remaining firm about their economic interests. And burden-sharing within NATO, he will no longer behave in the impulsive manner dear to Donald Trump.

Besides reaffirming the strength of the transatlantic relationship, the main course of the Brussels summit will undoubtedly be the relationship with Russia, whose foreign policy is based on the sharp perception of “encirclement” on the part of “NATO”. In this delicate context, the alliance will also have to try to rationalize Turkey’s behavior over the past two years. In an aggressive manner, Turkey has acted in Syria, Libya and the eastern Mediterranean, unilaterally, without consulting with its transatlantic partners. Much more important, under the pretext of Washington’s refusal to share its Patriot missile technology, Turkey acquired and deployed Russian S-400 anti-missile systems, creating an exceptional situation within the alliance.

Of course, the Turkish political discourse about this spread is well established: the world has changed with the fall of the Soviet Union, and Turkey has gained economic and military power, so it can no longer be satisfied with its association only with the transatlantic community. In other words, Ankara’s goal will be to achieve this An equal stance from the United States, the European Union, Russia and China, making the most of the expected images from the Erdogan-Biden meeting, on the sidelines of the NATO summit

From a NATO perspective, the reality is more complex. First of all, the Turkish Air Force will be divided into two parts. Its conventional forces (particularly its 245 F-16 fighter-bombers) are virtually associated with NATO, but its anti-missile defense (S-400s, by definition separate from NATO mechanisms) will remain dependent on Moscow for their maintenance, and will therefore be a problem not It can be separated from Russia’s access to data on the Allied forces.

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