From Anglophobe
This is a translation of an article by Jonathan Adiri in Ynet
The thunder from Ankara is infuriating but entirely expected, especially given the expected electoral moves for the generation that will succeed Erdogan. The real story is the NATO 3.0 vision of the Pentagon’s chief strategist, and in this game Turkey has cards that no one else has, not even Israel. These cards explain the cold logic behind the warm embrace that Turkey is receiving from Europe and the United States.
This week, the annual NATO summit will convene in Ankara, to which President Trump has pledged to come “with a bag of surprises,” as he put it. Anyone who wants to understand why Washington is embracing Ankara this week must put Israel aside for a moment. Israel is only part of the event, not the main part.
The key lies with Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy planner and author of “The Strategy of Deterrence,” in which he details the core of the American move – preventing Chinese hegemony in areas vital to the United States. On the eve of the Ankara summit, Colby tweeted: “We are racing toward NATO 3.0, in which Europe bears primary responsibility for its own conventional defense. Many said it was impossible. And here it is, disproven before our eyes. An alliance of partnership, not dependence.”
Behind the tweet stands an entire doctrine, which Secretary of War Pete Hegseth presented in a speech to the NATO forum last month. NATO, Hegseth said, had become “a paper tiger and a one-way street.” NATO 1.0 won the Cold War because it was a “tough fighting organization.” NATO 2.0 of the post-Cold War era has drifted, in his words, into gender equality, climate and security austerity: “an era of distraction, deindustrialization and demilitarization.” Now, the “NATO 3.0 Review” has been launched, a six-month review of the deployment of American forces in Europe. And then the sentence that every capital should memorize: This is a test “that some countries will fail, and others will pass with flying colors.” Who passes with flying colors? Look at Ankara’s schedule. At the end of June, the vice president of the European Commission landed there, and spoke of “a key partner in security, migration and energy.” At the same time, demonstrations in the Turkish capital were banned, waves of arrests continued, and the mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan’s main opponent, was in prison. About a week before, the Trump administration announced to Congress the sale of F110 engines worth $700 million to the Turkish KAAN fighter jet. At the same time, Turkey and Egypt completed the “Anatolian Eagle” exercise with Azerbaijan and a NATO advance warning plane. Those who still talk about “shared values” are telling themselves a story. There is only one test, the Hegseth test, and Turkey has four correct answers.
First, demographics. NATO 3.0 requires, in the crudest terms, warriors, not “flags on fancy tables.” The median age in Turkey is 34. In Germany it’s 46, in Italy it’s 48. While Europe struggles to man brigades, the 86 million Turks have a young workforce on a par with a superpower. Second, industry. The doctrine condemns “de-industrialization,” and Turkey is the complete opposite: Baykar’s drones are the world’s most proven military export product, KAAN has secured its first export customer with a deal for 48 aircraft to Indonesia, and F110 engines are already manufactured there under license. Turkey is responsible for some of the critical industrial production bases for the European economy. Third, a real army. The second largest in the alliance, with the rare asset in the West: a willingness to engage. Libya, Somalia, Syria, Karabakh – Turkish security forces are engaging in all of them, and in some of them permanent bases have even been established. Ankara was not afraid to confront Russia. Those who are willing to get their hands dirty are worth more than any speech about values. Fourth, distress that produces business. The Iran war has crushed the Turkish economy, and those who desperately need capital and investments are ready to close deals. And alongside the distress, a lever: Turkey controls the refugee tap from the East and Africa, just as Hegseth condemns Europe whose borders have “opened wide” and migration is the continent’s core problem.
Turkey’s anti-Israel incitement must be read against this background. The statements of Fidan and Erdogan are not evidence that Israel is at the center of Turkish planning. They are a combination of a sense of power, born of the American and European embrace, with an internal political calculation: Erdogan needs early elections or a constitutional amendment to run again, his camp is already preparing for the ballot, and Fidan himself is among the candidates to succeed him. In a stifled economy, a penny in Israel is the cheapest currency in the Turkish political market. Turkey, which found itself embarrassed when the foundations of its regional strategy collapsed, is demonstrating tremendous adaptability. It begins with a willingness to pay prices for the red line of using Kurdish forces in the war on Iran and ends with tailoring the moves with Trump behind the scenes against the backdrop of NATO’s collapse. The meaning for Israel is not comfortable. Against Turkey, which passes the NATO 3.0 test with flying colors, our protests will have limited weight. The way to influence American consideration is not to complain about the speeches, but to be tested by the same test itself and win it: technology, intelligence, and proven operational capability that Ankara cannot offer. Ankara is not read through Jerusalem. It is read through Washington.
