On June 3, 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that President Donald Trump will attend the July 7–8, 2026, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Ankara. Rubio signaled “significant changes” loom for the defense alliance.
No doubt the United States will reduce its commitment to Europe. Turkey, with NATO’s second-largest army, will step up to fill the gap. In such a case, however, the question arises about whether Turkey’s commitment to NATO’s founding principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law remains sincere or real.
In his early years, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was a disciple of Necmettin Erbakan, the father of political Islam in Turkey, and won Istanbul’s mayoralty in 1994 as a member of Erbakan’s Welfare Party. Soon after, he declared, “Democracy is not our aim; it is the vehicle.”
The question arises about whether Turkey’s commitment to NATO’s founding principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law remains sincere or real.
When the Constitutional Court ordered the dissolution of the Welfare Party in 1998 and Erdoğan received a short prison term for quoting a religious poem, he changed tack. In 2001 he formed the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which came to power the following year.
The AKP presented itself as Western, reformist, moderate, and neo-liberal, and Turkey’s European and U.S. allies bought the narrative. Accession talks with the European Union began in October 2005 but ground to a halt in December 2006 over Turkey’s refusal to recognize the Republic of Cyprus.
However, Erdoğan took advantage of the situation to cripple both the secular opposition and the military in a series of show trials over the alleged Ergenekon and Balyoz (“Sledgehammer”) plots, in which he alleged his adversaries were conspiring to overthrow his government. Following the attempted coup in July 2016, which he labeled “a gift from God,” Erdoğan instigated a purge of followers of his one-time ally, Turkish imam Fethullah Gülen.
The purge removed more than 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, a third of the total, as well 24,706 military personnel. Turkish forces have detained 390,000, with courts convicting more than 126,000. Arrests and trials continue.
Turkey did not brand the Gülen movement a terrorist organization (FETÖ) until May 2016. Consequently, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that membership of this organization cannot be punished retroactively. As a former judge remarked, “I went to bed a respected judge and woke up as a terrorist.”
“Our dream of a European Turkey has turned into a nightmare.”
In February 2012, Erdoğan stated that the aim of his AKP government was to “raise a religious generation,” but a year later, the demolition of Gezi Park in Istanbul to make way for a shopping mall provoked nationwide protests, mainly from young people. Their brutal suppression opened people’s eyes to the true nature of Erdoğan’s regime.
British liberal Andrew Duff concluded that Islamism had replaced Kemalism, and Dutch liberal Marietje Schaake bewailed, “Our dream of a European Turkey has turned into a nightmare.”
The turning point came with the local elections in 2024, when the Republican People’s Party (CHP), a largely secular party founded in 1923 by the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, regained the upper hand.
As a witness at a recent hearing of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in Washington noted, as the ruling party’s popularity decreased, its repression increased. What added insult to injury was that Istanbul’s popular mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, had already defeated the AKP’s candidate twice in 2019, once by a narrow margin and then again shortly after with 54 percent of the vote.
A spurious charge prevented İmamoğlu’s candidacy in the 2023 elections, and his arrest and indictment last year appears designed to remove his rivalry altogether. Erdoğan condemned the mass demonstrations that followed, the worst since Gezi Park, as “street terror.”
Not content with this, and aided by a pliant judiciary, Erdoğan has cracked down on the CHP and removed 25 elected mayors and jailed 20. To cap it all, just before the Eid al-Adha holiday, a court order declared the CHP leader Özgür Özel’s chairmanship of the party null and void and reinstated the former chair, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s foreign minister, has expressed interest in Turkey being included in Europe’s security architecture.
According to CHP deputy chair İlhan Uzgel, Kılıçdaroğlu has committed political suicide by allying himself with Erdoğan. As foreign correspondent Hannah Lucinda Smith concludes, Erdoğan’s coup is complete. Erdoğan has removed all effective opposition to his rule.
Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s foreign minister, has expressed interest in Turkey being included in Europe’s security architecture. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer invited Hakan Fidan to the inaugural meeting of the “coalition of the willing” in London last year to discuss the Ukraine issue.
After years of flirtation with Russia, or at least seeking advantage of playing the West and Russia off against each other, Turkey is quietly realigning its foreign policy more solidly towards Europe. Against this backdrop, Deutsche Welle’s correspondent Julia Hahn raises the issue of why Europe remains silent on Turkey’s opposition crisis.
Perhaps European officials at the NATO summit in Ankara can throw light on this and discuss how Turkey’s membership in NATO and its growing partnership with Europe are compatible with the values NATO and most European states uphold.
