Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is president of the Chicago Council on International Affairs and host of the weekly podcast “World Overview with Ivo Daalder.”

Sooner or later final month, there stood President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, holding palms with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahimi Raisi — two of the West’s impeccable foes.

Then, just some days later, there he was once more, this time seated subsequent to U.N. Secretary-Normal António Guterres on the signing of a deal permitting Ukrainian grain exports to transit the Black Sea.

Erdoğan as each villain and hero — simply the best way the mercurial Turkish President likes it. But it surely makes for a really difficult ally.

Turkey’s strategic significance to NATO is obvious. Geographically, the nation is situated alongside the south of the Black Sea, representing a bridge between Europe and Asia — with the Center East to the south, Central Asia to the east, and the Caucuses to the north. And for international locations bordering the Black Sea, the Turkish straits provide the one waterway to the Aegean, the Mediterranean and the oceans past.

Politically, Turkey is the biggest Muslim nation in NATO and is usually a helpful interlocutor with the Arab and Persian world. And whereas its diplomacy might be disruptive, Ankara’s tight connections with so many key gamers present it with political heft — because the conclusion of the Ukraine grain deal not too long ago underscored.

Lastly, militarily, Turkey deploys the second largest military in NATO, with fight expertise towards inner foes and exterior threats, and it’s dwelling to United States forces and different navy capabilities of important significance to the protection of each NATO and the U.S.

And, but, over time, Ankara has hardly been a dependable ally. Its checklist of offenses is lengthy, some going again a long time — similar to its unlawful invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and repeated confrontations with Greece within the Aegean.

However Erdoğan’s presidency has taken Turkey’s offenses to a wholly new degree. At dwelling, he has tried to smother the opposition, jailed his opponents, and his authorities has imprisoned extra journalists than some other on the planet. It’s additionally the one NATO nation ranked as “not free” by Freedom Home.

Worrying as this latest decline in freedom is, nevertheless, home turmoil and autocratic rule is nothing new for a rustic that has witnessed 4 navy coups because the finish of World Warfare II. Somewhat, it’s Turkey’s more and more erratic conduct overseas that has known as its standing as a dependable ally into query. 

Erdoğan is hardly the one NATO chief to have established heat relations with Putin. Simply consider Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a couple of years in the past, or Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán immediately. 

He’s, nevertheless, the one NATO chief to have purchased superior air protection missiles from Russia, as an alternative of buying Western gear that may very well be built-in into NATO’s air protection community. 

He’s additionally the one NATO chief — although not the primary Turkish one — to threaten an ally with power, as he did a couple of weeks in the past in a collection of tweets in Greek.

Inside NATO Erdoğan has been disruptive too, usually utilizing the Alliance’s reliance on consensus to try to get his approach — or block settlement. Not like practically all different allies, Turkey is completely happy to wield its veto and stand alone to try to get what it needs. 

For instance, upset by Israeli navy actions towards a Turkish provide ship making an attempt to interrupt the blockade of Gaza, Ankara blocked NATO collaboration with Israel for years. Insisting that NATO contemplate the specter of Kurdish terrorism as a menace to NATO, Erdoğan additionally blocked approval of Alliance contingency plans to defend Poland and the Baltic states. 

And just some weeks in the past, Turkey as soon as once more used its veto, this time to dam an invite to Sweden and Finland to affix NATO. Though the problem was resolved in time for a proper invitation to be issued on the Madrid Summit in June, provided that remaining accession requires all NATO international locations to ratify the step, Ankara nonetheless holds the ultimate card on whether or not and when the 2 Nordic international locations will be a part of the Alliance.  

However now, after Erdoğan’s refusal to impose sanctions on Russia for its outrageous invasion of Ukraine, his embrace of unsavory leaders and Islamic extremists, in addition to his techniques inside NATO some have begun to argue that the time has come to droop or push Turkey out of the Alliance.

There are a few issues with this proposal, although — one sensible, the opposite strategic.  

By its very nature, the very consensus precept that Turkey has efficiently exploited to its personal ends makes its suspension or ejection from NATO not possible with out Ankara’s settlement. Whereas Turkey can withdraw from NATO at any time — as France did from its the navy construction in 1966 — the Alliance would wish a consensus to eject a member. Thus, NATO’s Catch-22: its consensus rule can solely be modified by consensus. 

There’s additionally a strategic cause to maintain Turkey in NATO and attempt to use diplomacy, persuasion and stress to get Ankara to play ball: In or out, Turkey occupies a strategically very important place for the Alliance, with shut hyperlinks to the Center East and Caucuses that no different ally possesses or can replicate. It does, at occasions, play a helpful position in bringing in any other case recalcitrant events collectively as properly — as its relations with each Kyiv and Moscow have already highlighted. And it will probably, and has, contributed considerably to the frequent protection of the Atlantic Alliance.

In different phrases, Turkey’s an ally that’s more and more tough to stay with and practically not possible to stay with out. Or, as former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson stated of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, “It’s in all probability higher to have him contained in the tent pissing out, than exterior the tent pissing in.”