Turkey alleges that it has the role of a bulwark on NATO’s Southern Flank. In reality, over the last decade it has contributed as little as possible to NATO.
Particularly, under the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey exploits membership in NATO to advance its interests, pursue its goals and create tensions undermining the transatlantic alliance. Erdoğan’s megalomania poses a threat to Easter Mediterranean, Europe and Middle East North Africa. It builds regional influence/dominance, targets NATO allies, holds the U.S. in disdain, is in alignment with strategic adversaries of the West, supports terrorism, drifts away from democratic values and constantly violates the human rights.
NATO is built on a simple but demanding premise: collective defense requires collective discipline. The alliance’s deterrence power depends not only on military capabilities, but on procedural reliability. The expectation that agreed defense plans can be activated without political obstruction once consensus has been reached. When a member state repeatedly leverages procedural veto power to advance unrelated national agendas, the alliance’s credibility is not merely strained. It is structurally weakened. Turkey has used NATO consensus rules to dilute, delay, or reshape alliance positions on issues ranging from regional security declarations to political condemnations of authoritarian regimes aligned with Russian interests. The damage had already been done. Not operationally, but structurally. Because alliances are judged not only by what they decide, but by how reliably they can decide it.
Turkey acts not as a pledge of collective defense, but as a bargaining chip. Turkey is the proverbial Trojan horse to filibuster any action when crisis looms. A Trojan horse that wields its veto, shows discord and extracts concessions while cloaking itself in alliance legitimacy.
Turkey stands alone and is in the process of decoupling from NATO, gradually becoming from an uncertain ally to an unwanted ally.
The alliance faces a Trojan horse situation: Turkey no longer deserving of NATO membership.