In exchange, however, NATO had to overlook many issues that, in any other environment, proved detrimental to Turkey’s being a NATO member. Military coups and purchases of Russian armsBut the Turkish military was a double-edged sword; in 1960, the Turkish military orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, who was subsequently executed by a military tribunal in 1961. In July 2016, when the Turkish military undertook a failed effort to oust Erdogan, many of the perpetrators were officers with pro-NATO tendencies who objected to Erdogan’s Islamist agenda. The NATO alliance has been struggling with relevance since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The incident between France and Turkey exposes the fundamental weakness of NATO, an organization desperately in search of relevance.

Source: Libya Today July 17, 2020 16:18 UTC