Why Turkey called a NATO Article Four consultation
By M.S.
ON TUESDAY representatives of each of NATO's 28 member states gathered at the organisation's headquarters in Brussels, at Turkey's behest, to address the security threats that country faces related to the Syrian civil war. Turkey says it wants its allies' support in combating recent attacks by the jihadists of Islamic State (IS) and by Kurdish militants. Its NATO allies are happy to support its fight against IS, but the battle against the Kurds is more complicated. NATO member states were forced to attend the meeting after Turkey invoked the North Atlantic Treaty's Article Four.
What is Article Four?
Most people are familiar with NATO's Article Five, which commits allies to come to the aid of any member suffering an armed attack. Article Four is less well-known. It says the member states will "consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security" of any member is threatened. In other words, any NATO member can call for a meeting regarding a threat to itself or any other member.
How NATO's Article Five works
Are these sorts of consultations routine?
No. Article Four has been very seldom invoked; based on a British parliamentary document, this appears to be only the fifth such consultation since NATO was founded in 1949. (A NATO historian confirmed that Article Four consultations are extremely rare, but was unable to produce an exact figure.)
So this is a big deal.
We didn't say that. Article Four went neglected throughout the cold war, the most dangerous period of NATO's history. The first time it was called upon was in 2003, when Turkey invoked it to ask the allies for protection from Saddam Hussein during the American invasion of Iraq. Apart from last year, when Poland and Lithuania jointly requested an Article Four consultation after Russia's annexation of Crimea, Turkey seems to be the only country that has ever used it, and may be developing a bit of a habit.
Why is Turkey so keen on Article Four?
Turkey has always worried that other members of the NATO alliance do not take its security considerations seriously enough. Turkey has been a member since 1952, yet America has tended to see it more as a crucial strategic asset, first against the Soviet Union and later in conflicts in the Middle East, rather than as a full-fledged partner. When Turkey invoked Article Four in 2003, it was worried that the invasion of Iraq was threatening its own borders in ways that would be overlooked by the rest of NATO. NATO's agreement to deploy missiles and other assets for Turkey's defence was an important reassurance, and has been repeated during the Syrian civil war.
What is Turkey asking for now?
In the past two weeks, the fighting in Syria has spilled over into Turkey itself. First, an IS suicide bomber struck the border town of Suruc, killing 32 people, most of them volunteers planning to cross the border to provide aid to the Kurdish town of Kobane. Then militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who have been fighting an on-and-off guerrilla war against the Turkish government for decades, violated a two-year-old cease-fire by killing several policemen. Turkey responded with air strikes, first against IS and then against PKK camps in northern Iraq. (The PKK retaliated in turn, with a car-bomb attack on a Turkish military convoy.) It also granted America and its other NATO allies permission to use its airbase at Incirlik to strike IS in Syria, which they have been seeking for over a year.
The truce between Turkey and Kurdish militants is over
Turkey wants NATO to express support for its efforts to combat both IS and the PKK. But while NATO is pleased with Turkey's newfound eagerness to fight IS, it is hesitant about Turkey's aims towards the Kurds. America has a strong relationship with the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq and an increasingly strong one with another Kurdish militia in Syria, the People’s Defence Units (YPG), which battles IS. The YPG is closely allied with the PKK.
Furthermore, many believe that Turkey's Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is deliberately escalating the fight against the PKK in order to undermine popular support for Turkey's main pro-Kurdish political party, which drew many votes from secular Turks in the last elections in June. The long-ruling Justice and Development (AK) party, which Mr Erdogan co-founded, lost its majority in those elections and has failed to form a coalition, and Mr Erdogan may be planning to call snap elections. NATO is wary of such possible political motivations behind Turkey's fight with the Kurds.
Did Turkey get what it wanted out of the Article Four consultation?
Partly. In a statement, the NATO partners said they "strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against Turkey", and affirmed that "the security of the Alliance is indivisible". They placed their support for Turkey in the context of the international struggle against terrorism. America and other NATO allies consider both IS and the PKK to be terrorist organisations. But while the NATO statement specifically offers condolences to the families of the victims in Suruc, where IS staged its attack, it goes on to mention only "other attacks against police and military officers" rather than referring more clearly to the PKK's attacks. And it does not offer support for any particular actions undertaken by Turkey in response. Invoking Article Four has reminded everyone that Turkey is a NATO ally, but if Turkey wanted NATO's imprimatur for its war against the PKK, it does not seem to have got it.
