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Can Turkey Be a Trusted NATO Partner?

Jamie Dettmer

   Can Turkey be reeled back in as a trusted NATO partner? A growing
   chorus of policy-makers and foreign-policy analysts fear it can't.

   The threat this week by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to
   launch a military incursion into Kurdish-majority areas in northern
   Syria is setting the stage for yet another fierce dispute between
   Ankara and the rest of NATO -- including the U.S., which partnered with
   Syrian Kurds to rout the Islamic State terror group.

   Erdogan's warming ties with Russia's Vladimir Putin and his purchase of
   an advanced Russian air-defense system -- as well as his pursuit of
   strategies in Syria that conflict with those of other NATO partners and
   his support for Islamist causes-- are straining Turkey's ties with the
   West to the point of rupture, say analysts.

   Pentagon officials also have expressed frustration with signs of an
   Erdogan rapprochement with Iran.

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