Recep Tayyip Erdogan, photo via Office of the President of Russia
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,306, October 6, 2019
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Brinksmanship may be his trademark, but Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is unlikely to provoke the ire of the international community by launching a nuclear weapons program. Still, his demand that Turkey has the right to do so highlights the fracturing of the rules-based international order as well as changing regional realities.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s questioning of the international order with regard to nuclear weapons may well reflect the unspoken thinking of other regional leaders in a world in which the US has withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia and unilaterally walked away from the 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran, and in which countries like China and Russia are willing to sell nuclear technology as well as arms with few, if any, safeguards. In addition, the international community has failed to prevent Pakistan and North Korea from becoming nuclear powers.
