NATIONS should never join blocs whose acronym ends with the letter ‘o’ — Seato, Cento, Nato. It is an invitation to collective suicide. Seato and Cento were dissolved in 1977 and 1979 respectively, while Nato is in the throes of debilitating disintegration. Turkiye has been a member of Nato since 1952 and was a member of Cento since its inception as the Baghdad Pact in 1955. It lay too far west to join an East-centric Seato. Turkiye has the second-largest military within Nato. The Nato secretary general described it as among the world’s best. Despite that, it has never been admitted into that other Western club — the European Union.

Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acted as host at the last meeting of Nato leaders over July 7-8 in Ankara. He could have impressed his colleagues with a display of Turkiye’s military prowess and a grand parade. Instead, he chose to give them a portable reminder: a box containing a Magnum revolver engraved with the name of the recipient and six live bullets.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s modest gift of maple syrup, by comparison, seemed “undermatched”. EU President Ursula von der Leyen thanked Erdogan, telling him that the revolver would be “decommissioned and donated to a........

© Dawn