Turkey not gettig NATO’s military support in Syria, Reasons and explanations.
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Roshan Amiri
- . March 9, 2020
- . Update: March 9, 2020 12:15 pm
Ankara recently tried to knock on the gates of NATO, in light of the military escalation in Idlib governorate, northwestern Syria, but military experts exclude that “NATO” goes far in supporting Turkey in its conflict with the Syrian army, due to several reasons.
Last Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, reached a cease-fire agreement in Idlib province, but the situation remains fragile, according to experts.
And the military situation in the province flared up, in late February, after 34 Turkish soldiers were killed in strikes by the Syrian army backed by Russia, which caused Ankara to seek support from “NATO”.
Despite NATO’s solidarity with Turkey and its call for both Syria and Russia to “respect international law”, analysts believe that the military alliance will not implement Article V of great importance.
According to NATO’s Fifth Article, any military aggression against a member state of the military alliance is equivalent to attacking all other member states, and this requires a military response to support the allied country.
NATO recently agreed to increase military air support to Turkey, so that it can protect its lands. In recent years, Ankara has received nearly $ 5 billion in order to boost its military installations.
When Turkey launched a previous military operation, north of Syria, in October 2019, NATO and the European Union called on Turkey to show restraint and avoid what leads to instability in the region.
Article 5 was not activated by NATO, only once, during 71 years of the alliance’s life, and it was resorted to after the attacks of September 11th, 2001 in New York City.
Resorting to Article 5 of NATO requires the approval of all 29-member states, and this is difficult to achieve in the case of Turkey, which has worsened its relationship with many Western countries that own NATO membership.
Likewise, the sixth article of NATO, which determines the geographical scope to activate the fifth article, includes Turkish lands and the forces and military equipment present in the Mediterranean Sea, and therefore it does not apply to Turkish forces in northern Syria.
Article 51 of the United Nations Charter defines the conditions for self-defense, namely exposure to unlawful military action, and not exposure to military action by an adversary.
Accordingly, experts believe that from the perspective of the United Nations, the Turkish soldiers were not killed due to unlawful military action, but rather as a result of the Syrian army’s move in self-defense.
These Turkish troubles come in light of the difficult conditions that NATO is going through, so that the French President, Emmanuel Macron, earlier warned what he described as the “brain death” of the alliance due to Turkey’s unilateral actions and the United States’ self-reliance.
