Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
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WSJ
Apr 01, 2025 10:15 AM IST
Facing a Russian threat and a rift with Washington, European capitals can’t afford to alienate a powerful ally.
Protesters march through Istanbul following the arrest of mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
Turkey’s suppression of democratic opposition would have elicited strong protests from Europe in the past. But now, the worst rift in trans-Atlantic relations in generations and the growing threat from Russia are trumping those concerns.
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey PREMIUM
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
With the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s second-largest army and a robust defense industry, Turkey is crucial for European security at a time when President Trump’s administration is seeking a broad accommodation with the Kremlin and is treating its European allies with open hostility.
As European leaders started planning security cooperation without the U.S. following the disastrous White House meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, senior Turkish officials took pride of place. The European Union’s new white paper on defense, which outlines Europe’s massive rearmament drive, has named Turkey—alongside the U.K., Norway and Canada—as a key partner in ensuring European security.
Amid this rapprochement, Turkey this month imprisoned President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main rival in the coming presidential election, Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, in mid-March on what the opposition says are politically motivated charges. Mass protests are continuing across Turkey, as are wide-scale arrests of opposition politicians, journalists and human-rights campaigners.
While some European nations, most notably France, have expressed “deep concern” over İmamoğlu’s detention, the criticism is relatively muted—and didn’t link Turkey’s domestic politics to expanding security cooperation. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, too, has voiced “concern” to his Turkish counterpart, adding that “we don’t like to see instability like that in the governance of any country that’s such a close ally.”
European nations simply don’t have the luxury of focusing too closely on Turkey’s situation at home, with an existential threat from Russia and an increasingly hostile Washington, said Nico Lange, a former senior German defense official and a senior fellow at the Munich Security Conference.
“The Europeans are coming from the tradition where they imagine themselves to be the guys on the moral high ground who only do the right thing with the right partner on the basis of democracy and the rules-based order,” Lange said. “But now an adult geopolitical approach to security needs to look into trade-offs. It’s in our interest to work together with Turkey in the security sphere.”
The aftermath of a Russian attack on a Ukrainian town.
Police and protesters have clashed following the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
Igor Janke, director of the Freedom Institute think tank in Warsaw, said that European nations like Poland must focus squarely on their own immediate security now that they can no longer take American protection for granted. “In the current situation, with the new U.S. administration and the threat from Russia, democratic problems within other countries will not matter that much,” Janke said.
“From the Polish perspective, it is important for us to buy good [military hardware] and to keep our country secure,” he said. “If there is a threat of war, and our staunch ally is not as staunch as we thought before, of course we need to look for new partners.”
The pattern dates back to the 2015 deal between the EU and Turkey, when Brussels granted billions of dollars in aid to Ankara in exchange for stemming the flow of Syrian and other refugees, said Gönül Tol, director of the Turkey program at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “The EU is turning a blind eye to whatever Erdoğan is doing, for geopolitical reasons,” she said. “They will continue to cultivate closer defense ties with him.”
İmamoğlu himself, in a New York Times op-ed written from behind bars, decried Western acquiescence to Turkey’s democratic backsliding. Recent events “have enhanced Turkey’s strategic importance, not least given its critical capacity to help with European security,” he wrote. “However, geopolitics should not blind us to the erosion of values, particularly human rights violations. Otherwise, we legitimize those who are dismantling the global rules-based order piece by piece.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at a press conference on the sidelines of a NATO summit.
Italian parliament member Lia Quartapelle said Europeans should be clear-eyed about the authoritarian nature of Erdoğan’s regime: While security cooperation with Ankara is desirable, Turkey shouldn’t be put in the same category as the fellow democracies of the U.K., Norway and Canada.
“Ignoring what is happening inside Turkey is a very shortsighted choice,” she said. “Countries where the political survival of the person in charge trumps the national interest are not the kind of countries with which we can create a reliable alliance. Sadly, we are already learning this lesson at great expense with the United States.”
Turkey has tried to strike a balance between its Western allies and Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It refused to join sanctions against Moscow, becoming a key conduit of trade and technology for Russia. At the same time, Turkey also supported Ukraine, including through weapons sales, and banned Russian warships from entering the Black Sea.
But now, as Trump is seeking a new geopolitical agreement with the Kremlin that looks beyond ending the war in Ukraine, Ankara is finding itself outflanked as it grapples with new security challenges. Russia, after all, has been Turkey’s strategic nemesis for centuries—and Turkish officials fear that any deal between Washington and Moscow would inevitably come at Turkish expense.
“You don’t hear Turkish policymakers pontificating about the threat that Russia poses, but behind closed doors in Ankara it’s very much an issue of critical importance,” said Sinan Ülgen, Director of the Edam think tank in Istanbul. “The thinking is that it would be very inimical to Turkey’s strategic interests if Russia were able to implement this return to zones of influence, and particularly extend its zone of influence in the Black Sea.”
Turkey is also concerned about proposals voiced by U.S. officials for broader cooperation between Russia and the U.S. in the Middle East—a region where Turkey has just scored a strategic success with the ouster of the Russian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
“A great-power arrangement in which everyone gets their sphere of influence is not exactly good news for Turkey and inevitably creates, in the long run, a confrontational situation with Russia, whether it’s in the Black Sea, the Caucasus, or in the form of Russia coming back to the Middle East,” said Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a Turkey expert at the Brookings Institution. “A victorious Russia is very dangerous for Turkey, just as it was dangerous for the Ottoman Empire. There is an understanding of this.”
An unmanned aircraft made by Baykar, at a technology fair in Izmir, Turkey.
Modern Turkey certainly has a lot to contribute to Europe’s defense capabilities. Defense giant Baykar, which is purchasing Italian engine and aircraft manufacturer Piaggio Aerospace, has emerged over the past decade as a global leader in military drones. Turkey also is exporting fighting vehicles, ammunition, artillery systems and naval vessels to European nations. Many of these weapon systems are much cheaper than American or European analogs.
The development of Turkey’s indigenous armaments industry owes a lot to Ankara’s difficult relationships with its allies. The U.S. imposed a three-year arms embargo after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Germany slapped its own bans on weapons sales, most recently after Turkey’s ground operations in northern Syria in 2016. And in 2019, the U.S. ejected Turkey from the F-35 program because Ankara purchased the Russian S-400 air-defense system.
“There are few countries in Europe that have long reflected on how to be more independent of the United States—that’s France, that’s Turkey, that’s Sweden. This is useful in the current conversation,” said Camille Grand, distinguished policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations who served until 2022 as NATO’s assistant secretary-general for defense investment.
Yet, there is only so far Europe can go to expand security ties with Turkey while ignoring domestic turmoil there, he added. “Can this last forever? That’s complicated,” Grand said. “It depends on the scale of the protests inside Turkey, and on the scale of the repression.”
Police used pepper spray on protesters on the day Istanbul’s mayor was arrested
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
Europe Turns a Blind Eye to Erdogan’s Crackdown Because It Needs Turkey
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