By Hassan Mansour, Modern Diplomacy
The cold snap in the relations between Turkey, the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization becomes currently obvious. This is due to the fact that the Turkish leaders, along with carrying out original domestic policy, are quite ambitious in achievement of the foreign policy purposes, especially in the Libyan crisis.
Despite the Turkey’s membership in NATO since 1952 and its participation in a set of worldwide campaigns of the Alliance, the goals of Ankara contradict to interests of other member states and also provoke negative reaction of the European economic partners, mostly the neighboring to Turkey countries.
One of the last decisions, which stirred up the community not only in Europe, but also in many countries of the other regions, was Recep Erdogan’s Presidential Decree on withdrawal from the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and the domestic violence also known as “The Istanbul convention” on March 20 this year. Many politicians and human rights activists condemned this step. It also demonstrated unpredictable character of Turkish leaders’ actions again. Moreover, it should be mentioned that the Istanbul convention was signed by Turkey in 2011 just before coming to power of Justice and development party which is closely affiliated with the “Muslim Brotherhood” organization.
Along with features of its geographical position, Turkey is the only Muslim country in NATO that undoubtedly separates it from others Christian partners. Taking into account these factors, the Ankara’s policy will always be under the pressure and thus should be modest and balanced. However, as in example of its independent policy, the Turkish leaders are not scared to go for the conflict with partners in achievement of their foreign policy goals.
So, Turkey purchased the Russian “S-400” air defence systems that became a reason of keen discussions in the White House and resulted in imposing of economic sanctions on Ankara following to the Turkish Lira falling. In addition, Turkey was expelled from from the F-35 Joint Program. In turn, representatives of the Turkish Defense Ministry stated that there are no threats for this type of fighter jets from the S-400 systems. The U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently said that, despite a strategic partnership, there is a number of disagreements between American authorities and Turkey, in particular because of purchases of Russian-made arms. In turn, the president of the EU Council, Charles Michael, declared that the EU is ready to cooperate with Ankara in case of its “good behavior”, namely the start of political dialogue with Cyprus and Greece.
