The West’s Turkey Dilemma
Few countries better illustrate the difficult trade-off between democratic principles and strategic necessity than Turkey. As the country’s geopolitical and economic importance grows, NATO allies are becoming increasingly willing to overlook President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s attacks on democratic institutions.
Anne O. Krueger
WASHINGTON, DC—The rapid rise of China, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the US-Israeli war with Iran have made geopolitical rivalry the main force shaping the global economy.
President Donald Trump’s reversal of long-established US policies has compounded that uncertainty, forcing governments and businesses alike to navigate an increasingly complex strategic landscape.
The recently concluded NATO summit in Ankara reflected this new reality, demonstrating how geopolitical and security imperatives can trump other important policy objectives.
Nowhere is that trade-off clearer than in the West’s relationship with the summit’s host country.
Turkey has long been an underappreciated NATO ally and a vital economic bridge between Europe and the Middle East.
Although its ties with NATO and the West have weakened in recent years, the country’s unique strategic position makes it indispensable to the alliance.
Straddling Europe and Asia, Turkey occupies one of the world’s most consequential geopolitical crossroads.
Its control of the Bosphorus, which links the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, makes it the gatekeeper of Russia’s main warm-water maritime route to the wider world.
Turkey also borders Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, while sharing the Black Sea coastline with Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia.
With a population of nearly 88 million and NATO’s second-largest military, it is a major regional power.
Economically, it has emerged as one of the region’s leading manufacturing and logistics hubs.
After remaining neutral for nearly all of World War II, Turkey firmly aligned itself with the West by joining NATO.
It later became an associate member of the European Economic Community—the precursor to today’s European Union—and eventually applied for full membership.
The accession process gained momentum after Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the 2002 election, but negotiations dragged on for years and effectively stalled after 2017.
Much of the delay can be attributed to the EU’s reluctance to move forward as concerns about democratic backsliding under Erdoğan have intensified.
Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian rule has also strained relations with the United States, although Trump appears far less troubled by it than his predecessors were.
In 2019, Trump’s first administration blocked the sale of American F-35 fighter jets to Turkey after the country acquired Russia’s S-400 air-defense system because American officials feared that Turkey’s possession of both systems could give Russia valuable intelligence about the F-35.
The second Trump administration has taken a markedly different approach, moving ahead with plans to sell more than $700 million worth of jet engines for Turkey’s KAAN fighter program while signaling its willingness to reconsider the F-35 sale.
The S-400 purchase epitomized Turkey’s independent foreign policy and its willingness to maintain close ties with both the West and its principal rivals.
As relations with the US and the EU grew increasingly strained, Erdoğan continued to cultivate ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin while also supplying drones to Ukraine.
More recently, Erdoğan has sharply criticized the Iran war and, according to Trump, even considered entering the conflict against Israel.
This strategic ambiguity, together with Erdoğan’s unconventional economic views—most notably, his repeated assertion that interest-rate hikes cause inflation—has coincided with a marked decline in Turkey’s economic fortunes.
Two decades ago, the country was widely regarded as one of the world’s most promising emerging markets, especially following the sweeping reforms introduced by former Economy Minister Kemal Derviş after the financial crisis of the late 1990s.
Under Erdoğan, however, economic performance has been decidedly uneven.
Growth has generally been robust over the past two decades, supported by major infrastructure improvements and the rapid expansion of the defense industry and other manufacturing sectors.
But that growth has been accompanied by repeated boom-and-bust cycles, bouts of very high inflation, and recurring macroeconomic instability.
While inflation has fallen sharply since peaking at 85% in 2022 following a major stabilization program, the economy remains burdened by persistent challenges, including exchange-rate volatility and weakening exports.
The Ukraine and Iran wars have been both a boon and a burden for the Turkish economy.
While Turkey has benefited from business diverted from other parts of the Middle East and from rising exports of military equipment, disruptions to global energy markets and heightened commodity-price volatility have made inflation harder to contain.
In the years leading up to this month’s NATO summit, the EU and other Western allies had remained wary of Turkey because of Erdoğan’s attacks on democratic institutions, his close relationship with Putin, and his dubious economic policies.
But as Turkey’s strategic importance grew, many NATO allies began placing greater emphasis on security and defense cooperation.
The summit brought that shift into sharper focus, with Trump heaping praise on Erdoğan while European allies largely refrained from publicly criticizing the Turkish leader’s domestic record.
These shifts underscore recognition of Turkey’s strategic importance and pivotal economic role in an increasingly unstable region—and also encapsulate the dilemma confronting Western democracies: some of the countries that are most critical to transatlantic security are among those drifting furthest from democratic norms.
Press them too hard, and they may move into the orbit of rivals such as China and Russia.
Press them too little, and erosion of democratic institutions could accelerate, undermining both the values the West seeks to defend and its credibility in defending them.
Reconciling these competing imperatives is extraordinarily difficult, as EU and NATO leaders are discovering.
Yet doing so will be crucial not only to preserving the West’s credibility but also to realizing Turkey’s full potential as both a strategic ally and an economic partner.
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