Trump Could Use Differences Over Gaza To Decrease NATO Support, Analysts Say
Erdoğan said he would highlight his opposition to the war during the NATO summit, potentially putting the alliance in an awkward position
If reelected president, Donald Trump could use Turkey’s opposition to the war in Gaza as a way to decrease support for NATO, analysts told The Media Line.
Ahead of the NATO summit in Washington, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that he would bring up the deaths of Palestinians during the war and said the conflict was testing the alliance’s shared values.
On the sidelines of the summit on Wednesday, Erdoğan told the German chancellor that “it is necessary to pressure Israel into ending its attacks on Gaza,” a statement from the president’s communications office said.
He also raised the issue with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, stating that Ankara was pushing for a peaceful solution to “Israel’s attacks on Gaza.”
In his statement before flying to Washington, he said that the international community had failed to stop Israel.
Ryan Bohl, a Middle East analyst for the risk intelligence company RANE, said if Trump is reelected in November, he would likely use the difference in positions on the war to decrease support for NATO.
Trump is almost certainly going to seize on some of these inconsistencies and narratives that are critical of NATO to try to build the political case for the United States to have a reduced role with the alliance. The real question is how many institutional safeguards can be built before he potentially becomes president and how much focus would a theoretical Trump presidency give toward undoing those sorts of institutional bulwarks.
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“Trump is almost certainly going to seize on some of these inconsistencies and narratives that are critical of NATO to try to build the political case for the United States to have a reduced role with the alliance,” Bohl wrote in a message to The Media Line.
“The real question is how many institutional safeguards can be built before he potentially becomes president and how much focus would a theoretical Trump presidency give toward undoing those sorts of institutional bulwarks,” he continued.
In February, Trump said he would tell Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any NATO country that does not meet its financial commitment to the alliance. This remark called into question the alliance’s key principle of collective defense, which states that each member country must respond if another is attacked.
He also said the US should not cover other countries’ share of payments to the alliance.
Ozgur Ünlühisarcıklı, director of the German Marshall Fund’s Ankara office, told The Media Line that divisions over Gaza may weaken NATO, especially since the alliance is making no effort to reach a consensus position on the war.
“Our competitors are actually exposing and using it in their own rhetoric,” he said of NATO’s inability to take a stance. Ünlühisarcıklı noted that Trump is unpredictable and said if member states increased their contributions, the divisions may not become major problems for the alliance.
Opponents of NATO have used the war in Gaza to knock Washington.
The Chinese state-controlled Global Times has published pieces accusing the US of applying double standards to human rights regarding its stance on the conflict.
The Turkish president initially took a restrained position on Israel’s response to October 7, but after widespread domestic pressure and criticism of Turkey’s trade relations with Israel, Erdoğan has become an outspoken opponent of Israel’s Gaza campaign.
His positions have put him at odds with several key NATO allies, including the US.
While Erdoğan has suggested Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal who should go on trial, US President Joe Biden backed Israel after the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requested an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.
Bohl said Erdoğan bringing up this division on the global stage could be awkward for the alliance.
Ankara is unlikely to face retaliation for bringing the issue up, Bohl said, seeing as it eventually toed the line with the alliance in supporting Finland and Sweden’s bids to join NATO.
Nevertheless, he said, different stances on Gaza could create problems for NATO leadership, as some could argue the alliance is not applying the same values it claims to hold regarding confronting Russia.
