Suchergebnisse

As the incumbent Turkish administration strives to pursue more aspiring goals in foreign affairs, Turkey's military policy is fast developing in line with this vision. The nation's defense technological and industrial base can now produce various conventional weaponry. Of these, without a doubt, Turkey's drone warfare assets have garnered the utmost attention among the international strategic community. In tandem, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) have gradually gained an expeditionary posture with forward deployments across a broad axis, ranging from the Horn of Africa to the Gulf and the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, the military's doctrinal order of battle has been transforming to address the unfolding hybrid warfare challenges in Ankara's hinterland. Turkey's proxy warfare capabilities have also registered an uptrend in this respect. Nevertheless, Ankara will have to deal with certain limitations in key segments, particularly 5th generation aircraft and strategic weapon systems which, together, represent a severe intra-war deterrence gap in Turkey's defense posture. The Turkish administration will have to address this specific shortfall given the problematic threat landscape at the nation's Middle Eastern doorstep. This study covers two interrelated strategic topics regarding Turkey's national military capacity in the 21st century: its defense technological and industrial base (DTIB) and its military policy, both currently characterized by a burgeoning assertiveness.

NATO faces a problematic threat landscape in the Mediterranean. The Alliance has to deal with hot topics that range from Russia's robust military posture and involvement in the Syrian Civil War to ISIS terrorism and the migrant crisis. To address all of these challenges, NATO should boost its engagement with partner nations, produce a new maritime security approach, and counterbalance Moscow's strategic foothold in the eastern Mediterranean.

The Syrian Arab Army's chemical warfare capacity has been a game-changer throughout the civil war. Unlike intelligence estimates, Bashar al-Assad's military planners considered these deadly weapons to be tactical arms for battlefield use, rather than last-resort strategic assets. During the reconstruction period, the West should pursue a comprehensive approach to address issues concerning Syria's weapons of mass destruction.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has recently stated that there is no reason why Turkey should not have nuclear warhead-tipped missiles, at a time when other nations also possess such a deterrent. The Turkish president's remarks sparked heated debates as to Ankara's possible military policy shifts and related nuclear objectives. In the 2010s, Turkey accomplished a number of outstanding achievements in the defence sector, especially in unmanned systems development. Ankara is also pursuing a ballistic missile programme (the Bora missile) which saw its operational debut back in May 2019. However, in the short term, the Turkish defence technological and industrial base (DTIB) lacks the capacity to support military-grade nuclear proliferation, nuclear warhead design and strategic ballistic missile production. More importantly, present indicators suggest no backtrack from Turkey's non-proliferation commitments. Rather, the 'nuclear missile' rhetoric essentially highlights Ankara's geopolitical worldview.

Russia has mounted its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) footprint in the Levant and also boosted the Syrian Arab Air Defense Force's capabilities. Syrian skies now remain a heavily contested combat airspace and a dangerous flashpoint. Moreover, there is another grave threat to monitor at low altitudes. Throughout the civil war, various non-state armed groups have acquired advanced man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), which pose a menacing challenge not only to the deployed forces, but also to commercial aviation around the world. In the face of these threats, NATO needs to draw key lessons-learned from the contemporary Russian opera-tional art, and more importantly, to develop a new understanding in order to grasp the emerging reality in Syria. Simply put, control of the Syrian airspace is becomingan extremely crucial issue, and it will be a determining factor for the war-torn country's future status quo.

FEUTURE Online Paper No. 27 Greek-Turkish relations have come under significant strain in the last couple of years and are likely to remain difficult in the long-run there seems to be little appetite in both sides of the Aegean for a substantive discussion and subsequent negotiation for the full normalization of Greek-Turkish relations as both sides are either faced with pressing domestic priorities or with important external challenges and have no intention of spending precious political and diplomatic capital for the resolution of bilateral problems, at least in the immediate future. A Cyprus settlement has been extremely difficult to achieve over the past (almost) half a century and there is rather limited optimism that the situation will change in the near future. The sad truth is that three of the four parties to the conflict are relatively content with the status quo, or at least insufficiently unhappy with it to make the painful and risky compromises an agreement would warrant. Particularly for a large part of the Greek Cypriot community, the status quo appears to be preferable to a federal peace agreement which is being perceived as problematic, especially regarding security provisions. Therefore, the most probable scenario is 'business as usual/muddling through' akin to the "conflictual cooperation" scenario identified in other workstreams. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 692976. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.