In a recent piece in The Atlantic, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow with the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, urged the United States to confront Turkey. According to Gerecht, Turkey has emerged, under the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “as perhaps the greatest danger to Israel in the Middle East, escalating the threat of a conflict he won’t be able to avoid.” Gerecht charges Erdogan with setting the stage for a clash with Israel as a key tactic in his power projection strategy abroad.
To reduce the risk of “yet another regional war,” Gerecht urges President Donald Trump to take a tougher line on Turkey, admonishing him that calling Erdogan a “friend,” as Trump did, “won’t cut it.”
Gerecht is a neoconservative hawk. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and now advocates for U.S. strikes on Iran. His piece targeting Turkey doesn’t advocate war with that country, but it nonetheless exemplifies the persistent flaws of the neoconservative worldview: an exaggerated perception of threat, a conflation of American and Israeli interests, and a failure to prioritize among global challenges in ways that emphasize the U.S. national interest.
As for threat perception, Gerecht’s portrayal of Turkey as a menace to the West is hyperbolic. There is no doubt that Erdogan is an authoritarian leader bent on dismantling Turkey’s democracy. He had his most formidable political challenger, Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem Imamoglu from the opposition People’s Republican Party, arrested and disqualified from running for election. Worse, Erdogan’s foreign policy is assertive, particularly in Syria, where Ankara supported Sunni Islamists with roots in Al Qaeda as they toppled the country’s secular president Bashar al-Assad. In the South Caucasus, Erdogan backed Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev’s war against Armenia, which resulted in ethnic cleansing of more than 100,000 Christian Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Yet none of that directly threatens U.S. interests. While undermining Turkish democracy is deplorable, it is up to the Turkish people, not Washington, to resist the drift into autocracy. Throughout history, Turkey’s vibrant society has amply demonstrated its democratic resilience, and it is doing so again by protesting Erdogan’s power grab. As for Syria, however distasteful the new Turkish-backed rulers in Damascus may be, they are focused on consolidating their domestic rule, not waging a global jihad against America.
Moreover, Ankara remains an important partner for Washington. It has NATO’s second-largest military, hosts a joint U.S.-Turkish airbase in Incirlik, and controls the strategic Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits in the Black Sea. While Erdogan’s failure to enforce sanctions against Russia drew criticisms from Western supporters of Ukraine, Trump likely sees Erdogan’s channels of communication with Russian President Vladimir Putin as a valuable asset in the efforts to end the Ukraine war. Like it or not, Turkey’s strategic advantages and diplomatic standing mean it is poised to play a relevant role in resolving the conflict.
Rather than demonizing Turkey, as Gerecht is doing, a realist approach would involve pragmatic diplomacy that keeps Ankara tethered to the West while seeking to limit, where possible, Erdogan’s worst excesses at home and abroad. This approach is likely to work better anyway. Overheated rhetoric would inflame tensions without delivering anything of value to Washington except a sense of moral self-righteousness.
Gerecht’s piece also reveals a troubling tendency to prioritize Israel’s security over America’s. Gerecht frets over Ankara’s criticisms of Israel and its support for Hamas and Syrian Islamists. Yet despite Gerecht’s framing, these actions by Turkey are not direct challenges to the U.S. Indeed, they may not even be direct challenges to Israel.
Erdogan’s inflammatory rhetoric against the Jewish state is mostly performative: During Israel’s assault on Gaza following the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas, Turkey never stopped oil shipments to Israel from Azerbaijan, even though they pass through the Turkish territory. Ankara’s actions in Syria are similarly less hostile to Israeli interests than they may seem. The primary motivation there was not to threaten Israel, but to eliminate the perceived threat to Turkey posed by the radical leftist Kurdish guerrillas allied with the terrorist Kurdish Workers’ Party.
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Gerecht is worried that the Turkish-backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) now ruling in Damascus could, in time, become a Sunni version of Hezbollah, an anti-Israel militant group in Lebanon. However, both Ankara and the new Syrian leaders went out of their way to emphasize that they are not seeking a war with Israel. To the extent that this reluctance may change and give way to a more assertive stance, Israel mostly has itself to blame. Under the guise of creating “buffer zones,” Israel engaged in systematic destruction of Syria’s military capabilities and occupation of Syrian territory, actions that have continued after the collapse of the Assad regime and the rise to power of HTS. These moves incentivize Turkey to do more, not less, to boost the military capabilities of the new Syrian government, making Israel’s worries a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Aggressive Israeli moves in Syria undermine not only Turkey’s interests, but also America’s. Trump has consistently voiced his desire for the U.S. to leave Syria, but chaos in the country could complicate that objective. During Trump’s first term, his own officials sabotaged an ordered troop withdrawal. Now, he is trying again to bring U.S. forces back from Syria, but hawks inside and outside the administration will look for any reason to keep them there, including a supposed need to safeguard Israel’s security. Israel, meanwhile, has formidable military capabilities, both conventional and nuclear. It is perfectly capable of defending itself. The job of the U.S. government is to protect Americans, not to police Israel’s neighbors, especially when doing so entails turning troops into sitting ducks in conflict zones.
Gerecht and his ilk, in addition to vilifying Turkey, are also advocating U.S. military strikes against Iran. Such proposed strikes are advertised as “limited,” but they likely would drag America into another Forever War in the Middle East. Iran, of course, is another of Israel’s foes that poses little threat to the American homeland. A U.S. war with Iran would stretch resources thin and risk strategic over-commitment at a time when Washington should focus on China, a peer competitor. Turkey’s objectionable policies and Iran’s regional ambitions are, for the U.S., secondary concerns that distract from paramount strategic imperatives. A sensible U.S. policy in the Middle East would engage both Turkey and Iran diplomatically—something Trump has shown a willingness to do. It would also decouple U.S. interests from Israel’s and focus on the true strategic interests of the American nation. The U.S. is not the world’s policeman, nor Israel’s bodyguard, and now is a good time to shed neoconservative fantasies that suggest otherwise.
