Eunomia » Turkey and NATO

Daniel Larison May 6th, 2011

David Bosco points to a poll of Turkish public opinion on NATO, notes the rising anti-NATO sentiment in the country, and comments:

One of the real strategic costs of the decision to force the Libya operation into the NATO framework may be an acceleration of this trend.

That’s probably right. The cost to NATO in terms of future political support in member states is hard to estimate, but it seems safe to assume that it will be significant. What is also interesting in the poll is the finding that anti-NATO sentiment has increased least among supporters of the ruling AK Party from 32% in 2004 to 52% in 2010 saying that NATO is no longer essential to Turkey’s security. This has tripled (24% to 72%) among Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) supporters. The main Kemalist opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), has occasionally been the most anti-NATO party between 2004 and 2010, but trailed the MHP in 2010 with just 59% saying that NATO is not essential. For all of the talk about how Erdogan and the AKP have been moving Turkey away from the West, AKP voters have remained relatively more supportive of NATO than their opponents. While NATO and the EU have been losing support in Turkey since the beginning of the century, there is a significant anti-Western and/or Turkish nationalist surge that has happened recently. It seems to have spiked between 2009 and 2010. While Erdogan has been willing to demagogue and exploit the changing public mood, the ruling party and Erdogan’s government have been trailing and trying to keep up with Turkish public opinion.

Stronger support for NATO in the AKP might exist because it is currently the ruling party, and supporters of ruling parties tend to be more favorably inclined towards the status quo. Members of opposition parties express their displease with the ruling party by objecting to whatever the government endorses. Even so, it seems likely that Turkish foreign policy would become even less closely aligned with that of the U.S. and Europe in the event that the CHP somehow succeeded in replacing the AK government at the next election. The next general election is this June, and the CHP continues to trail AKP badly in polling, so it seems that NATO and the U.S. are going to be stuck with Erdogan and the AKP for at least a few more years.

via Eunomia » Turkey and NATO.