Ertuğrul Kürkçü
National Defence Minister Yaşar Güler, while discussing his ministry’s 2024 budget at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) Plan and Budget Committee, had announced that they planned to “acquire 40 Eurofighter jets.” Güler described the Typhoon Eurofighter, which he referred to as “a very effective plane,” as being positively received for sale to Turkey by its other joint producers, the United Kingdom and Spain, and mentioned that they were “working to persuade Germany.”
The phrase “working to persuade Germany [to sell fighter jets to Turkey]” inevitably grates on the ears, considering the relationship between the two countries, both of which are NATO members. Although the Erdoğan regime tries to explain this situation with the suspicion that “they are implementing a secret embargo on us,” Markus Bayer, a security policies expert at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC), says that the issue stems from the obligation to consider the criteria outlined in the EU’s common position document on the control of military technology and equipment exports.
According to this, “exports should not be made to countries where human rights and international humanitarian law are restricted, where there are internal conflicts, or where there are problems related to peace and security in the region.” Bayer states that “Germany must evaluate whether the weapons supplied will be used in Syria, and whether this would violate the EU criterion of not contributing to regional instability. Additionally, the political nature of Sweden’s NATO membership will undoubtedly be an important consideration in this assessment.”
Bayer also points out that among Germany’s concerns is the fact that “the U.S. removed Turkey from the F-35 project due to its purchase of the S-400 missile defence system from Russia, and that Turkey’s subsequent application for F-16s was blocked by Washington due to Ankara’s stance on blocking Sweden’s NATO membership and its position on sanctions against Russia.”
What more is there to say?
However, it’s evident that the “EU position document” is not interpreted in London, Rome, and Madrid in the same way as in Berlin, and the revenue of 4 billion dollars generated from the order of 40 jets, each costing 100 million dollars, cannot be easily ignored by the producer countries, including Germany. The European Union is once again faced with the dilemma of whether to forsake human rights “chickens” for the “geese” that might come from Erdoğan. Indeed, BICC expert Bayer ultimately says, “There are concrete reasons for Germany not to approve, but these reasons do not necessarily mean that approval will be denied.”
So, why is Ankara desperately scurrying in the international fighter jet market?
Turkey is in the NATO alliance with the world’s largest military forces. Turkish jets’ “dogfight” with Greece actually serves as a “friendly” military training exercise for both sides. Ankara is in a give-and-take relationship with Moscow. Non-NATO regional states like Iran, Iraq and Syria do not pose a meaningful military threat to Turkey’s air warfare capabilities with their air forces.
Therefore, justifying Ankara’s desperate pursuit of aircraft stemming out of a “perception of external threat” or, in other words, a “defensive necessity,” lacks military and political logic. Suppose Ankara has another motivation to increase and enhance its air warfare capacity and simultaneously channel public resources into the “military-industrial complex.”
Unfortunately, such a motivation exists. It was clearly and extensively articulated by Erdoğan at the 14th Ambassadors Conference. He began his agitation by telling Turkey’s foreign representatives, “We are working tirelessly to ensure that the shadow of our glorious flag, instilling confidence and peace in those who see it, envelops the whole world.” He continued, “Our principle is very clear: Turkey, located at the heart of three continents, cannot merely observe events from the stands. Being strong on the field and at the table is not a choice but a necessity for us […] We are concerned with protecting Turkey’s interests by utilising all means of diplomacy, both hard and soft power elements.”
One might interpret these as the creations of a delusional mind, the overreaching actions of an incompetent leader, or the high-pitched expressions of irredentist aspirations commonly shared, openly or covertly, among Turkish political elites. However, the “real issue” becomes moot for debate once it’s positioned as “enveloping the whole world” by someone to whom all the power and authority of the Turkish state have been – albeit through trickery and junk – delivered for the third time under the title of “President.” To conclude, the procurement of 40 Typhoon Eurofighter jets, necessitating a military expenditure of 4 billion dollars, is required for the execution of Erdoğan’s “imperialist” and “irredentist” claims.
Indeed, even long before Erdoğan’s appearance on the horizon, Ankara’s “defensive” perspectives were already guided by this irredentist mentality. The generation that emerged from the middle and high schools shouting “Cyprus is Turkish and will remain Turkish,” in the 60’s even after undergoing the “revolutionary education” of the 1968 movement and being beaten by the military coup of 12 March, managed to find wisdom in the invasion of Cyprus. They convinced themselves that the operation aimed to “crush the fascist Sampson coup” on the island and “overthrow the colonels’ regime” in Athens. The genie of “restoring the old ‘life space’ –as in the German Lebensraum—of Turkdom” that was released in those days never went back into the bottle. This irredentism, sometimes expressed in terms of the “National Pact (Misakı Milli),” sometimes as “Islamic brotherhood,” and sometimes as it was in the words of former prime minister Demirel, go two-forty “in the vast geography extending from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China and even from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which includes the Turkish world,” would naturally receive a “Necip Fazıl interpretation” from Erdoğan: “Turkey will rightly fulfil its responsibility today, as it has for centuries, to be the standard-bearer in the struggle [to prevent attacks on our Holy Book, the Quran].”
A country producing only 2.2% of the world’s gross domestic product will certainly have limits to its “imperialist” aspirations. However, one should not dismiss this 2.2% lightly, as it is larger than the shares of France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain, and only slightly behind Germany’s, although far behind the combined power of the European Union. Yet, in the region, the scenario is quite different.
For Erdoğan, Eurofighters are necessary to maintain unrivalled air superiority in the region, to shape or disrupt the dynamics in Iran, Iraq, Syria, the Aegean and the Mediterranean. Ankara perceives the most critical threat not in nation-states but in the potential unification of Kurdish forces across Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The additional air power is required not so much to deter regional states, which Erdoğan’s Ankara has already balanced and suppressed, but to deter the Kurds from exercising their right to self-determination.
Ankara is in a rush to bolster its air combat fleet, aiming to keep the Kurds under the perpetual shadow of the wings of the Turkish Air Force and within the range of its drones. Rather than direct ground assaults, it seeks to undermine Kurdish aspirations for self-governance or their capacity to turn to radical policies by providing air support to proxy forces on the land.
In its tussles with major powers and regional states, Ankara is striving to remain in the game as a considerable force. The dictatorship calls the diversion of 4 billion dollars from public health, education and welfare to major imperialist arms corporations in a single transaction a “national cause,” and considers peace with the Kurds as “treachery,” because peace requires sharing sovereignty. The façade of this sickly irredentism, which opposes sharing sovereignty by recognising the Kurds’ right to self-determination—a human cost of zero (numerically, “0”)—with delusions of “enveloping the world with the Turkish flag,” will continue to be passively observed as a mere “detail” until its deceit is exposed both domestically and internationally, hence, leading to the continuous and inconspicuous squandering of priceless human, ecological, historical and urban assets.
If the issue is “defence,” the only logical and ethical way for Turkey’s “defence” is not through aspiring to dominate the world or allocating resources for armament, but through sharing sovereignty and prosperity. Colonialism has no excuse.
* Ertuğrul Kürkçü is the current Honorary President of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and Honorary Associate of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). He spent 14 years as a prisoner between 1972-1986 for his political activism in Turkey. He is also member of Progressive International Council.
