Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (L-R) during a meeting on the sidelines of the Sharm El-Sheikh Peace Summit on October 13, 2025.
Suzanne Plunkett / POOL / AFP
As the European Union takes cautious but historic steps toward strategic autonomy, it now faces a defining test of principle: How far is it willing to stretch the idea of “partnership” before it loses all meaning?
Turkey, a NATO member in name, but a strategic actor increasingly aligned with rival power centres and a systematic violator of the rights and sovereignty of EU member states, has formally requested access to SAFE (Security Action for Europe), the EU’s new €150 billion defence initiative aimed at strengthening the bloc’s technological and military capabilities. That Ankara would seek entry into such a structure is unsurprising. That some EU and NATO leaders appear open to the idea, despite Turkey’s flagrant defiance of European interests, is really unacceptable and what should truly alarm us.
Turkey’s inclusion in SAFE would not mark a bold gesture of engagement. It would signal Europe’s strategic incoherence. Under President Erdoğan, Turkey has pursued an openly revisionist foreign policy. It maintains an active casus belli against Greece, an EU member state, and openly challenges its sovereignty in the Aegean under the fabricated theory of “grey zones.” It continues to occupy northern Cyprus, an EU member state, in direct violation of international law and decades of UN resolutions.
Its provocations in the Eastern Mediterranean are not occasional accidents but calculated moves, backed by the expansionist ‘Blue Homeland’ doctrine, which treats parts of Greece and Cyprus as illegitimately European.
Yet despite this record, pressure for Turkey’s inclusion continues to mount. Berlin has quietly shifted toward a more permissive stance, reversing previous German resistance to arms exports and lobbying actively for Ankara’s access to SAFE. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has gone further, reportedly urging EU member states during a closed-door Coreper meeting to show “trust” in Turkey—an appeal that stretches the alliance’s credibility to its limits.
The fact that NATO, an alliance built on trust, consensus, and mutual defence would ask the EU to empower a state that actively threatens two of its own members is not just politically tone-deaf; it is strategically incoherent.
But the issue is deeper than NATO dysfunction or European naivety. The problem is that Turkey has ceased to behave as an ally at all. Increasingly, it positions itself not as a misunderstood partner, but as a regional rival with divergent and often antagonistic strategic goals.
This is evident across multiple theatres. In Libya, Turkey’s military and political intervention bolstered factions opposed by France and claimed maritime rights that directly challenge those of EU member states. In the South Caucasus, its unwavering support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict not only inflamed tensions but deepened intra-European divisions, particularly with France. In Syria, it occupies swathes of territory in the north and has brokered deconfliction arrangements with Moscow that sideline Western-aligned objectives entirely.
None of these moves reflect the conduct of a country seeking inclusion in a shared European security vision. They reflect a nation pursuing its own neo-imperial strategy, often at Europe’s expense.
Compounding this, is Ankara’s increasingly transactional relationship with Russia. Despite supplying drones to Ukraine, Turkey refuses to join EU sanctions, maintains deep energy cooperation with Moscow, and continues military-technical coordination with the Kremlin. The S-400 missile deal alone, a system incompatible with NATO defences, was a red line that Erdoğan willingly crossed.
Far from acting as a balancing power between East and West, Turkey has become a tactical opportunist, leveraging its NATO membership to extract concessions from the West while simultaneously undermining it.
Against this backdrop, granting Turkey access to SAFE would amount to funding a strategic rival. It would give Ankara, and by extension its increasingly politicised defence sector, privileged access to European technology, funding, and planning mechanisms.
Turkish firms, many of which operate under direct political oversight and serve state strategic objectives, are already seeking entry into dual-use supply chains. Their inclusion would not only introduce severe security vulnerabilities but would blur the very boundaries SAFE was created to strengthen.
SAFE was conceived in response to Europe’s geopolitical awakening, a belated recognition that reliance on external security guarantees, particularly from the United States, is no longer sustainable. It is intended to consolidate a coherent European defence identity. To grant access to a country that systematically undermines that identity is to betray the project at its inception.
To its credit, Greece has drawn the line. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis have made clear that Turkey cannot be treated as a partner so long as it maintains an active threat posture against EU states. Greek MEP Nikolas Farantouris, a member of the European Parliament’s Security and Defence Subcommittee, has rightly called the idea of Turkish participation “unthinkable.”
This position is not Greece’s alone. Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has also issued firm warnings, stressing that no state actively occupying EU territory and rejecting the sovereignty of a member state can be allowed to participate in shaping Europe’s defence future. His remarks reflect the deep unease across the Eastern Mediterranean, a region where Turkey’s aggressive posture is not hypothetical, but lived reality.
Their stance is not just a matter of national interest; it is a defence of European principles. If a country that occupies EU territory and openly threatens another member’s sovereignty can gain access to EU defence platforms, then the concept of shared security becomes meaningless.
And yet, as the 30 November deadline for SAFE applications approaches, pressure is intensifying. Many European capitals may prefer to appease Ankara for the sake of “stability” or diplomatic flexibility. But this would be a profound strategic miscalculation and one that Europe would come to regret.
European strategic autonomy means little if Europe cannot define and defend its own red lines. A Union that funds and empowers a state that contests its internal borders is not autonomous. It is adrift.
The question is not whether Turkey is a significant power. It is. But strategic partnerships are built not merely on geopolitical weight, but on mutual trust, shared values, and a common sense of purpose. Turkey, under its current regime, embodies none of these.
If Europe truly seeks sovereignty, it must begin by defending the sovereignty of its own members. If it seeks unity, it must begin with clarity. Turkey does not belong in Europe’s defence future, not now, and not until it respects the rules of the European game, the rule of law, and the sovereignty of EU member states.
As long as Cyprus, an EU member, remains under illegal Turkish military occupation, the very idea of Ankara participating in the EU’s defence structure should not be up for discussion.
The SAFE initiative was designed to secure Europe. Including Turkey would do precisely the opposite.
