The Danger in Arming Erdogan’s Turkey

President Trump says he would “consider” selling the world’s most advanced fighter jet, the F-35, to Turkey. Time to reconsider. Arming President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would be ill-advised, and illegal to boot. The president cites his good relationship with the would-be sultan at Ankara. Yet while Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty, and a host this week to the alliance’s summit, Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey has been no friend to America. Bipartisan legislation against selling advanced air power to Turkey, which Mr. Trump signed into law in 2020, followed Mr. Erdogan’s decision to favor Russian S-400 air defense batteries over the American-made Patriot system, used by the rest of NATO. As long as Ankara uses the S-400s, according to law, America is banned from selling F-35s to Turkey. Land sakes. Why share stealth technology with Russia, Communist China, and Iran’s regime?The administration is reportedly considering a shortcut around the law. It would be to convince Turkey to buy Patriot batteries and transfer its S-400 system to Ukraine. Even if such a maneuver is successful, there is another legal stumbling block to the sale. Congress has reaffirmed a principle that existed since President Lyndon Johnson’s era: Israel must maintain a Qualitative Military Edge in the Middle East. The reason for America’s long Military Edge policy is that Israel’s existence is constantly threatened by several of its neighbors. The idea that the Jewish state has no place in the Middle East animates crowds across the Arab world, the Shiite mullahs of Iran, and, increasingly, Sunni Turkey. Mr. Erdogan “threatens to destroy my country, the one and only Jewish state,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CNN Tuesday, amid a TV blitz against the sale. As Iran’s power diminishes, Israelis see Turkey as its most powerful future enemy. Selling F-35s to Mr. Erdogan “would destroy the power balance in the Middle East,” Mr. Netanyahu says. Ankara harbors “aggressive aspirations” to “restore the Ottoman Empire,” he said. Turkey, he adds, threatens a North Atlantic ally, Greece, occupies a part of Cyprus, and is “infected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which hates the United States.”That’s not how Mr. Trump sees it. “Turkey has been in many ways much more loyal than other countries,” he told reporters at Ankara Tuesday. Mr. Erdogan, the president said, was a “prime candidate” to join the Iran war on the Islamic Republic’s side. Mr. Trump, though, convinced his “friend” to stay out. If so — a big if — can we trust Mr. Erdogan not to join Tehran’s “death to America” crowd in the future? Would Turkey then use our F-35s against us?The reason Mr. Trump cited for Turkey’s possible alliance with Iran was Mr. Erdogan’s “relations with Israel.” That relationship was exacerbated last week, when Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said “these people” — Israeli Jews — “have become a burden that humanity can no longer bear.” Interior minister Mustafa Ciftci called for Jerusalem to be “liberated” from the infidels and fantasised about becoming the Israeli capital’s governor.Mr. Erdogan is an autocrat who jails political opponents, silences the adversarial press, and fights the kind of secularism that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk instilled in Turkey after World War I. Turks increasingly turn on America, and antisemitism spreads in the country. Ankara hosts Hamas, controls adjacent Syria, and dreams of dominating the Mideast and lands once ruled by the Ottomans. America’s advanced weapons would only whet such appetites.

The Danger in Arming Erdogan’s Turkey

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