On February 17, at the Elysée Palace, President Emmanuel Macron brought together seven European leaders, the heads of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU) bodies to reaffirm their support for Ukraine. Several EU officials expressed their frustration at not having been invited. But one country in particular was conspicuous by its absence: Turkey, NATO’s second-largest military power.

Eleven days later, on February 28, it took a spectacular on-camera altercation between the American president, his vice president, JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House for things to change. Turkey’s absence from Paris, immediately described as a “strategic miscalculation” by Middle East specialist Zineb Riboua of the American think-tank Hudson Institute, was remedied in London the following day, on March 2, by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was invited to attend this crisis summit as one of around 15 leaders. Like other participants, he did not say much at the end of the meeting, but he did make a point of stressing the importance of his country’s participation in the new security architecture being discussed for Europe. And that’s already a lot. The day before, he had spoken on the telephone with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

Only a quarter of a century ago, Ankara was an enthusiastic candidate for EU membership. After years of estrangement from Brussels, and increasingly visible diplomatic tensions with Paris and Berlin, it now represents a country with multiple and complex diplomatic facets. Considered by its peers as “awkward” at best, and “disruptive” and “unreliable” at worst, Turkey is now a crucial, even indispensable, member of NATO, especially for a Europe more weakened than ever by Washington’s changing stance.

Entente cordiale displayed with Putin

Why? First and foremost, the country led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the past 22 years is one of the few regional powers capable of both cooperating with Russia and limiting its influence, as it has shown in Syria. Before the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Moscow defined the parameters and contours of Turkish influence in northern Syria. Today, the opposite is true. It’s a serious incentive for EU countries to put in place the mechanisms needed to ensure that Turkish leaders sit at their tables much more often.

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