Turkey in NATO
bilateral relations
Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952, has its second largest army and is the host of the Allied Land Command headquarters. The Incirlik and Konya Airbases have both been involved in several NATO military operations since their establishment. The current ambassador to NATO is Zeki Levent Gümrükçü.
Turkey's actions under Erdogan's administration have caused friction within NATO. Controversies include its acquisition of Russian S-400 missile systems (which led to US sanctions and removal from the F-35 program) alongside independent military operations in Libya and Syria and aggressive rhetoric toward another NATO member: Greece. It has been argued that Turkey's democratic backsliding would prevent it from qualifying for NATO membership if it were applying to join the alliance today.
Background
Turkey sought NATO membership to secure guarantees against potential invasion by the Soviet Union, which made several overtures towards control of the Straits of the Dardanelles. In March 1945, the Soviets terminated the Treaty of Friendship and Non Aggression to which the Soviet Union and Turkey had agreed in 1925. In June 1945, the Soviet Union demanded the establishment of Soviet bases on the Straits in exchange for a reinstatement of this treaty. The Turkish President İsmet İnönü and the Speaker of the Parliament responded decisively, avowing Turkey's readiness to defend itself.
Accession
In 1948, Turkey began indicating its desire for NATO membership, and throughout 1948 and 1949 American officials responded negatively towards Turkish requests for inclusion.
“Turkey in NATO” enters the record as bilateral relations. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Turkey, NATO and bilateral can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q112578609. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1952, 1945, 1925 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “Turkey in NATO” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.