NATO to adopt a new policy guide on counterterrorism at key summit

SERKAN DEMİRTAŞ - BRUSSELS

NATO is expected to adopt a new policy guide on the fight against terrorism, one of the two main threats, along with Russia, against the alliance, during a major summit in July, the Hürriyet Daily News has learned.

The 32-country alliance will convene on July 9 and 11 in Washington to mark its 75th anniversary with the participation of the heads of states and governments.

The summit will mainly discuss NATO’s renewed collective security and deterrence capacity, the Russian occupation of Ukraine and combatting terrorism, according to a senior Turkish official.

The alliance assigned Russia and terrorism as top two threats at its summit in Madrid in 2022 and will adopt a new policy guide on the latter.

“We are now working on a policy guide to be adopted at the summit. This will be a generic document that outlines the basics of the alliance’s determination in the fight against terrorism,” the official stated.

Fighting against multiple terror organizations, including the PKK and its Syrian associate YPG for decades, Türkiye has been complaining about insufficient emphasis on the fight against terrorism in the alliance.

The official expressed Ankara’s satisfaction for the designation of terrorism as number two threat to NATO but recalled that the allies are yet to discuss and agree on how to jointly combat terrorism.

One of the top reasons for this is the fact that the United States is providing political and military support to the YPG in northern Syria under the pretext of fighting ISIL, the official underlined.

“They do not want their wrong policy on this issue to be exposed. That’s why they prevent these issues from being addressed at the alliance,” underlined the official.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is planning to attend the summit along with other leaders and is expected to reiterate Türkiye’s disturbance over the continued U.S. support to a terror organization which has been posing a threat against a NATO ally.

But the official stressed that Türkiye will not allow this issue to overshadow the summit and continue to discuss it with the U.S. on the bilateral platform.

Türkiye and the U.S. have recently made progress in their bilateral relations after a long and troubled period. They launched the Strategic Mechanism at the foreign ministers’ level to discuss all bilateral issues as well as regional and global conflicts. They also resumed stalled counterterrorism talks recently.