How much longer will the US maintain the fiction that Turkey is a key NATO ally or that NATO really enhances the security of the American people.
There seem to be three reasons why the fiction is maintained: (1) Turkey’s membership in NATO works as a brake on Erdogan and the Islamist element; (2) if Erdogan and his regime fall, even a vestigial tie to NATO would provide a basis for US and European intervention in favor of a secularist, pro-Western regime as the successor; and (3), formally suspending or expelling Turkey from NATO would likely be seen as an insult to the Turkish nation and to Islam and become a potent emotional rallying point for anti-Western forces there and throughout the region.