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Turkey had pressured NATO allies into softening their official reaction to the ‘forced landing‘ of a passenger plane by Belarus authorities, Reuters reported on May 28, citing two diplomats familiar with the matter.
The incident, which took place on May 23, saw the emergency landing of Ryanair Flight 4978 in Minsk. Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich, who was aboard the flight, was detained by his country’s authorities.
In a statement, the NATO’s 30 members condemning what they called the forced landing of a Ryanair flight by Belarus with a cautious tone.
Two diplomats told Reuters that Turkey insisted that any mention of support for more Western sanctions on Belarus, calls for the release of political prisoners there or threats regarding the NATO’s cooperation with the country should be removed from the statement.
The diplomats speculated that Ankara might be trying to preserve ties with Moscow, Belarus’ closest ally. According to the diplomats, another possibility may be Ankara’s keenness to welcome Russian tourists this summer following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Turkey’s pressure to soften the statement upset a number of NATO members, particularly Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, who wanted a tougher wording.
This stand by Turkey may have been in fact the result of Ankara’s discontent with key NATO allies, namely the US and France. Furthermore, Turkey may be trying to keep Minsk away from recognizing Crimea as a Russian territory, which is of special interest for Ankara.
What a nice suprise, good job Turkey!
From another standpoint, it shows that Turkey is more important to NATO than Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. The latter countries should know their place and turn down their rhetorics.
Turkey has the largest Army, excluding the US, out of the NATO Member States. Poland pays the contractual 2% GDP to NATO, but, that is only a small amount and not as though Lithuania and Latvia, provide much to NATO. At the end of the day, it was Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, that were behind the coup d’erat and friends. Plus, Switzerland sent the message about the suspect package on board, to more than one nation. Then you have the fact that NATO took down the President of Bolivia’s plane, when looking for Edward Snowden.
Poland doesn’t actually pay NATO. the 2% of GDP is Polands military spending which is a policy of NATO. About 0.3% of all military expenses go to NATO for each nation on average but the US probably commits more than half of that amount so NATO doesn’t get money.
Well, I hadn’t learned about the role of Switzerland, which changes everything about this matter. Also, like you said, NATO has no right to lecture Belarus in light of what they did in the case of Snowden.
more likely Americans are not interested into escalating this before Putin-Biden summit
Old news actually
Turkey has absolutely no sway in nato. Unless they are allowing themselves to be wheeled along as a nato trojan horse. The Turkish admin have been ignoring nato headquarters for some time, so they are hardly likely to be listened to over a major effort by nato itself to turn Belarus into another Ukraine.
Why should it be bothered? As we have seen over in Syria, the Turkish admin thinks little of the sovereignty of other nations.
Just another whirling dervish to keep the Russians mesmerized.