There’s a lot of agitation within Turkey to leave NATO as well as a lot of NATO members wanting to kick Turkey out because of the constant problems they keep causing.
Not the least of these was their refusal to purchase our anti-aircraft missile systems with the purchase of our fighter jets. They insisted on buying the Russian system instead, which would require giving the Russians secret information about our aircraft. They did this because the Russians told them to, and they have allied with Russia as well as with NATO, which is enemies with Russia. The end result was they bought the Russian system and we refused to sell them our aircraft.
Now we have Sweden and Finland wanting to join NATO and approved by all members except Turkey, which has been making demands of those countries that go against their constitutions and cannot be met.
This is Turkey’s self-appointed dictator Recep Erdogan’s flexing his ego and testing his power against the NATO nations and the reason many are calling for Turkey’s ouster from NATO.
The reasons Turkey hasn’t been ousted yet are because Turkey joined in 1952, long before Erdogan came along, and may be easier to live with after he’s gone. That’s one, and the fact that we are using part of their Tikrit air force base to house some of our military aircraft and to deploy, re-arm and refuel them from there in military actions. Tikrit is very strategically important to us and NATO and if Turkey leaves NATO we lose access to Tikrit.
Erdogan is a Muslim arab and they’re all into manipulating and double-dealing, intrigue and backstabbing, agreeing and then reneging. Dealing with these people is always a fucking nightmare because they never do anything straight up.
The very latest on this is that Turkey may stop blocking Sweden and Finland and get some F-16s, instead of leaving or being kicked out of NATO. More as it happens.