The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) consists of 30 different member countries with the U.S., Canada, and Turkey residing as the only members outside of continental Europe. In the last few years NATO has faced significant hurdles from alleged Russian hacking, election interference, and poisoning of dissidents in NATO member countries, to competition between Greece and Turkey over resources in the Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus, and U.S. President Trump’s public rebukes of the necessity of the alliance itself. However, a new problem has arisen and may be the worst crux of all for the multilateral defense cooperation.
On October 21, 2020, a French teacher was beheaded in the outskirts of Paris by an 18 year-old boy for showing Charlie Hebdo satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad to his class as examples of the principle of “free speech.” Free speech and freedom of the press are fundamental pillars of democracy and is a common value encouraged by Western democratic nations such as those composing the majority of NATO membership.
Turkish President Erdogan and French President Macron have since made several public remarks rebuking one another over their views regarding caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad. These public remonstrations have led to a boycott of French goods by several predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey, Pakistan, Qatar, Iran, Bangladesh, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. Additionally, the murderer was born in Russian controlled Chechenya with alleged connections, help, and an online declared fatwa by Sheikh Yassin Collective, an Islamist group named after the founder of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The Muslim world is uniting under their core value of preserving religious icons, France is utilizing this incident as a means to diplomatically connect with an estranged Russia, European leaders side with Macron and the teacher under the principle of freedom of speech, current leaders and allies, France and Turkey, continue to politically subjugate one another to negative rhetoric, Muslims in Europe are fearful of retribution, Europeans abroad are advised to avoid public places, and to keep everything in perspective a man has died.
This conflict appears on the surface to be a clash of ideology, what happens next? What if similar events occurred followed by adversarial activity against a NATO ally? These seem like far-fetched questions, but these fundamental disagreements in foundational principles could be the actual end-all-be-all of the NATO alliance. Think about it this way, Turkey has not been granted entry into the European Union after an extremely long and difficult process exacerbating the differences in ideology and governance, which started in 1987. However, despite key issues preventing a monetary union (there is a separate EU-Turkish Customs Union) between Turkey and Europe, the U.S. and Europe deemed Turkey a worthy defense partner by permitting NATO ascension.
Only the future will tell, but if your best friend or defender from bullies made the entire high school or university population avoid you and refuse to assist you in practical ways because of a disagreement over some issues, such as cheating on a test, would you not find it difficult to bridge the gap and overcome that experience? Luckily international relations aren’t entirely like high school, but what could be worse for NATO than vehemently contrasting principles amongst its member states?
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