It takes a clinical case of solipsism to behave as irresponsibly as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan does.
Then again, maybe he’s doing it on purpose. Erdogan faces an election in May or June — one that, despite his strongman machinations, he could theoretically lose. In the run-up, he’s apparently trying to energize his hard-line and Islamist bases. To him that seems to mean acting like a geopolitical orc.
Officially, his country is one of the 30 members of NATO and, on paper, even a candidate to join the European Union one day. In reality, he’s more often undermining the Western alliance and the EU, as part of his anti-Western and neo-Ottoman shtick. That even includes threatening war against Greece, a NATO ally. But it mainly means blocking the accession to NATO of two formerly neutral EU countries, Finland and Sweden.
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