“Turkey should be kicked out of NATO”

A new survey has revealed well over half of the German population would like to see Turkey booted from the NATO over its recent military incursion into northeastern Syria.

Of those surveyed, 58 percent reported wanting Turkey expelled from NATO while even greater numbers supported imposing economic sanctions and export bans against Erdogan’s government, Deutsche Welle reports.

The survey, conducted by the global public opinion and data company YouGov, and commissioned by the news agency dpa, interviewed more than 2,000 adult Germans between the 25th and 28th of October. The poll discovered that 58 percent of Germans want Turkey ousted from NATO – an intergovernmental military alliance of 29 North American and European countries originally designed to counter Soviet military expansion into Europe.

Just 18 percent of survey respondents were against Turkey’s expulsion from NATO. 

An even larger percentage of the German population would like to see their government take a tougher stance against Turkey, with 69 percent supporting a complete ban on arms exports and 61 percent supporting economic sanctions against Erdogan’s government. 

Since Turkey’s military offensive into northeast Syria earlier this month, the German government has halted some of its arms exports. However, a complete ban on arms sales to Turkey like Merkel had previously promised to do has yet to be enacted.

On the other hand, national populist politicians from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) have called for a less tolerant approach to be taken, urging both Berlin and Brussels to freeze all outgoing funds to Turkey.

Germany isn’t the only NATO member to harshly criticize Turkey’s military aggression in the Middle East. Many other countries inside the alliance like the US and various EU member states have also condemned Erdogan’s actions as well.

Although NATO’s founding charter does allow for members to remove themselves from the military alliance, a formal mechanism by which a member country can be thrown out of the organization by other members has been established. Thus, the removal of Turkey from the alliance would be a messy and prolonged process that would require the approval and ratification of every member country.

 It’s no secret that Turkey acts as a strategic land bridge connecting the East to the West. Furthermore, Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO, second only to the United States, making it a crucial contributor to the alliance’s defense and military capabilities. Together, these two facts make the prospect of expelling Turkey from the alliance a daunting one. 

To make matters worse, Turkish President Recep Erdogan threatened to ‘open the gates’ and ‘flood’ Europe with the 3.5 million ‘refugees’ currently living in Turkey if European governments fail to assist him in building a so-called ‘safe zone’ along Turkey’s border with northeast Syria.