Thursday, October 9, 2025
Nordic Monitor
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Extremism
  • Military
  • Terrorism and Crime
  • Intelligence
  • Foreign Policy
  • Contact Us
    • Give us a tip!
  • About Us
  • Home
  • Extremism
  • Military
  • Terrorism and Crime
  • Intelligence
  • Foreign Policy
  • Contact Us
    • Give us a tip!
  • About Us
No Result
View All Result
Nordic Monitor
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Extremism
  • Military
  • Terrorism and Crime
  • Intelligence
  • Foreign Policy
  • Contact Us
  • About Us

Turkey sought to bar Egypt and Israel from NATO exercises, documents reveal

December 30, 2019
A A
Turkey sought to bar Egypt and Israel from NATO exercises, documents reveal
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Nordic Monitor

 

Turkey pursued a policy to exclude Egypt and Israel from NATO’s major military activities, including joint exercises in 2015, under the Mediterranean Dialogue (MD) platform, Turkish military documents have confirmed.

According to the military memos issued by the Turkish General Staff in December 2015, Turkey insisted on taking separate North Atlantic Council (NAC) decisions on each exercise to be held by the NATO alliance within the MD framework in order to limit Israeli and Egyptian participation in these activities.

The NAC is NATO’s decision-making body, with all decisions taken on the basis of unanimity.

 However, NATO member states including the US, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and Greece opposed Turkey’s proposal and argued that such requirements would undermine NATO’s cooperation with its partners in the Mediterranean region, the memos stated.

 

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, giving the four-finger Rabia sign at a diaspora event in Geneva on December 16, 2019. He borrowed the gesture from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and turned it into his own, adopting the “One nation, one flag, one homeland, one state” slogan.

 

The military documents also revealed Turkey’s strategy of isolating Israel from NATO military exercises conducted under the MD initiative. In that regard, Turkey requested that military exercises be open only to NATO partner states following NATO Military Committee (MC) approval and a NAC decision and that MD partners be allowed to attend joint exercises as observer states.

According to the documents the US, the Czech Republic (Czechia), France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada and Greece argued that member states have a right to request the approval of the MC and the NAC for military exercises that are considered politically sensitive but alleged that NATO’s Education, Training, Exercise and Evaluation Policy (MC 0458/3) does not give allies the right to block all joint exercises carried out under the partnership program.

The MD was initiated in 1994 by the North Atlantic Council. It currently involves seven non-NATO countries in the Mediterranean region: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The framework was set up to develop political dialogue and practical cooperation between the Alliance and its partners in the Mediterranean region.

 

 

Turkish diplomats delivered démarches in Brussels in order to insert Turkey’s position (pro-Muslim Brotherhood) on political developments in Egypt into the NATO Strategic Intelligence Estimate (NSIE/2015) document, the memos underlined, adding that the US, France, Greece and Italy had broken NATO’s silence process, a mechanism used by NATO to adopt texts, since Turkey’s consideration included political motives and were not based on intelligence data.

 

 

After the fall of the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt, then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan quickly moved in to gain influence in Cairo during Mohammed Morsi’s presidency. However, following the ouster of Morsi in June 2013, Ankara lost its gains completely and offered the Muslim Brotherhood leadership refuge on its soil. In response, Egypt gave the Turkish ambassador to Egypt 48 hours to leave the country, beginning a rapid cooling of relations. Since then, tensions between Turkey and Egypt have been escalating and are in turn impacting the political situation in the eastern Mediterranean region.

On December 14 the Turkish government submitted a recently signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to parliament, which has indicated its readiness to send troops to help Libya’s UN-backed government. Ankara’s move again raised tensions in the Mediterranean. The following day, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi urged other countries to stop intervening in Libya, in an apparent rebuke to Turkey, saying: “We could have intervened in Libya. But we didn’t do this and respected Libya’s circumstances to preserve fraternity.”

Moreover, Egypt has also slammed a maritime deal determining the Turkish-Libyan continental shelf and exclusive economic zone coordinates for contravening international law.

ShareTweet
Previous Post

Turkey, Qatar cooperate on electronic warfare systems

Next Post

Turkey considers forming paramilitary firm like American Blackwater and Russian Wagner to send fighters abroad

Nordic Monitor

Nordic Monitor

[email protected]

Next Post
Turkey considers forming paramilitary firm like American Blackwater and Russian Wagner to send fighters abroad

Turkey considers forming paramilitary firm like American Blackwater and Russian Wagner to send fighters abroad

Germany struggles with the prosecution of never-ending Turkish espionage cases

Germany struggles with the prosecution of never-ending Turkish espionage cases

October 9, 2025
Turkey shifts to US partnership for second nuclear plant once promised to Russia

Turkey shifts to US partnership for second nuclear plant once promised to Russia

October 8, 2025
Murder raises new questions about Turkey’s fight against ISIS

Murder raises new questions about Turkey’s fight against ISIS

October 7, 2025
Turkey’s release of ISIS detainees fuels European terrorism threat, Dutch court case shows

Turkey’s release of ISIS detainees fuels European terrorism threat, Dutch court case shows

October 6, 2025
Erdogan pushes for northern Cyprus election win amid allegations of interference and mafia links

Erdogan pushes for northern Cyprus election win amid allegations of interference and mafia links

October 3, 2025
Erdoğan government believed Muslim Brotherhood would make a huge comeback in Egypt in few years

Turkey’s top court quashes terrorism conviction of 2 Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members

October 2, 2025
Turkey emerges as key haven for Iranian who launched $88M Bittrex crypto case

Turkey emerges as key haven for Iranian who launched $88M Bittrex crypto case

October 1, 2025
Turkish military journal claims NATO is using Ankara without giving it a voice

Turkish military journal claims NATO is using Ankara without giving it a voice

September 30, 2025
$100 billion OmegaPro scandal highlights Turkey’s role as a haven for global fraudsters

$100 billion OmegaPro scandal highlights Turkey’s role as a haven for global fraudsters

September 29, 2025
Turkey shifts away from Russia with new gas deals, hoping to win Trump’s favor

Turkey shifts away from Russia with new gas deals, hoping to win Trump’s favor

September 26, 2025

Nordic Monitor

Nordic Monitor is a news web site and tracking site that is run by the Stockholm-based Nordic Research and Monitoring Network. It covers religious, ideological and ethnic extremist movements and radical groups, with a special focus on Turkey.

Tags

al-Qaeda Andrei Karlov Cyprus Diyanet Egypt Erdogan espionage Germany Greece Gülen Movement Hakan Fidan Hamas Hulusi Akar Ibrahim Kalın IHH Iran IRGC Quds Force ISIL ISIS Isis al-qaida Israel Libya Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı MIT Muslim Brotherhood NATO President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Profiling Qatar Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Russia SADAT spying Spying Activities Suleyman Soylu Sweden Syria Torture Turkey Turkish Intelligence Turkish Intelligence Agency Turkish intelligence agency MIT Ukraine United States

Recent News

Germany struggles with the prosecution of never-ending Turkish espionage cases

Germany struggles with the prosecution of never-ending Turkish espionage cases

October 9, 2025
Turkey shifts to US partnership for second nuclear plant once promised to Russia

Turkey shifts to US partnership for second nuclear plant once promised to Russia

October 8, 2025
Murder raises new questions about Turkey’s fight against ISIS

Murder raises new questions about Turkey’s fight against ISIS

October 7, 2025

Copyright © Nordic Research and Monitoring Network All rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Extremism
  • Military
  • Terrorism and Crime
  • Intelligence
  • Foreign Policy
  • Contact Us
    • Give us a tip!
  • About Us

Copyright © Nordic Research and Monitoring Network All rights reserved.