Turkey Breaks From The West on Defense

Turkish soldiers last year attended an army parade marking 
the 40th anniversary of the Turkish military invasion of Cyprus. 
Photo: Yiannis Kourtoglou/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

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Ankara takes steps to boost its own arms industry and reduce its military dependence on its NATO allies

Since the Ottoman Empire traded swords for guns two centuries ago, Turkey’s military has relied on Western arms and know-how. Now, the country’s leadership is pushing to end that arrangement in a shift that is rattling its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.

The Turkish Air Force performed during celebrations of 
the 31st anniversary of proclamation of the Turkish 
Republic of Northern Cyprus last year. 
Photo: yiannis kourtoglou/Getty Images

Ankara has recently moved to diminish Turkey’s military dependence on the West, including last month inaugurating rocket testing and a radar technologies facilities. Both are part of Turkey’s effort to boost a fast-growing arms export industry that also is supplying its own forces with locally built tanks, warships, drones, missiles and—by the republic’s centenary in 2023—a jet fighter.

Ankara has also rejected bids by its NATO allies for a missile-defense system in favor of a Chinese-built one that one these partners say is incompatible with their technology and threatens intelligence cooperation.

Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government argues it needs a more independent military force to avoid the fate of the Ottomans, whose empire collapsed after banking on alliances with Germany and Austria-Hungary, only to be invaded by the U.K. and France—a bitter historical chapter that still fuels mistrust toward the West.

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“We lost World War I because the Ottoman state did not have its own combat technique,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said at a March ceremony at the 100th anniversary of the Turk victory over the Allies in the Dardanelles. “A nation that doesn’t have its own defense industry cannot have a claim to independence.”

The government’s historically grounded concerns also have modern precedents: The U.S. imposed a crushing arms embargo on Turkey for more than three years after Ankara’s 1974 military intervention in Cyprus. And only after long and contentious discussions did NATO allies agree to deploy Patriots to protect the country during the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 Iraq war.

Still, the policy shift is roiling Turkey’s decadeslong alliance with the West, just as both sides seek each other’s help to counter security threats, particularly in the battle against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

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