Atlantic Man: Economic NATO for Turkey

If American and European leaders really wish to do more to keep Turkey oriented to the West — an important objective at a time when Islamist extremism presents a grave threat, and when no one can be sure whether the Islamic party just elected to power in Turkey is sincere in saying it has given up its extremist roots — then it is through the Atlantic institutions that they must do it, not through the EU.
Since Turkey is already a member of these institutions, the way to integrate Turkey is simply to make more of these institutions. That is, to build them up and give them greater authority.
There is plenty of space for making more of these institutions. NATO is the most important of them. As its secretary-general, Lord George Robertson, has noted, it needs to "modernize" — read: strengthen and streamline — its decision-making procedures, strengthen the role of its international civil staff, and adapt its military structures to the new fluid tasks of a non-Cold War world. On the last point there has been some movement of late; elsewhere, much remains to be done.
The OECD is in a sense already an "Economic NATO." Formed in 1961 as the successor to the OEEC that implemented the Marshall Plan, Turkey was a charter member.
The problem with OECD is that it is a weak institution, far from the equivalent of NATO in its own sphere. It is virtually invisible to the public; it does not give its member societies a sense of belonging to a greater whole with a shared identity. It needs to be strengthened, or supplemented with a second, more visible "Economic NATO."
The EU has already been used as a supplement, a sort of "Economic semi-NATO" on top of the OECD. It has enabled a European subgroup of OECD countries to undertake a much deeper integration with one another. But it is not made for everyone.
It is time to consider a true Economic NATO, consisting of all OECD members willing and able to go farther than OECD in uniting their economies but not as far as the EU.
This means an economic community that would at minimum include the United States and the EU, and would be open also to the East Europeans and Russians, the Turks and Mexicans, and the Japanese and South Koreans, assuming that they meet the conditions of the community.
Proposals for a Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area or TAFTA have found some resonance, but also run into resistance. Free trade would inevitably be an ultimate outcome of an Atlantic economic community, but need not be the starting point. What matters is to reach agreement on an initial bargain in the mutual interest for common management of trade and currency issues, and get the arrangement underway. Unlike the OECD, this arrangement would have some political visibility and an element of a shared identity and ambition.
Ultimately, the responsibility would still fall back on Turkey to keep itself friendly. All the West can and should do is to provide Turkey with a choice of deepening its engagement with the Euro-Atlantic world on a basis that is practical for this generation and the next.
The EU is not such a basis. Only trans-Atlantic political and economic structures can provide the basis. Turkey itself could be encouraged to take some initiative for their strengthening. This would do far more to satisfy Turkish feelings of pride and overcome its misgivings about the Western world than any false promises the EU might be pressured to make.