US must stand by Turkey in crisis with Russia: lawmaker

By Esra Kaymak Avci

WASHINGTON

The U.S. must let Turkey know that it stands with Ankara in case of a crisis with Russia, a Republican congressman said Thursday.

Speaking at The Weekly Standard's foreign policy breakfast, Ted Poe criticized the U.S. administration for lacking an active foreign policy and called it to support its NATO ally when necessary.

"This issue that was brought about NATO, that Turkey being on its own, that actually happened," he said.

According to Poe, NATO should respond as a group if anything happens to any of its allies, including Turkey.

"Remember Article 5 deals with the issue of defense of a country not offense of a country," he said of the alliance’s founding treaty and blamed the U.S. for not having a concrete plan to deal with Russia.
Meanwhile, Director of Transatlantic Security Initiative Magnus Nordenman said Turkey was one of the "consistently highest spenders" of NATO on the European side.

"Washington in the NATO context needs to pay attention to this fissure or crack between Turkey and NATO in case of a crisis," Nordenman said, adding that Turkey was on the frontline of the crisis with Russia to some degree. 

"It is potentially game ending if Turkey gets left alone in a crisis with Russia and NATO is not there, so definitely the U.S. focus should be there."

He said Russia's current actions in Ukraine and Syria need to be stopped with a decisive plan by the U.S.

Poe also stated that Russia would find a reason to incorporate eastern Europe as well claiming to protect the ethnic Russians in the region. Poe stated the West, instead, was doing nothing to prevent the Russians from doing malicious things.

One of the recent crises that Russia was involved in was the clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the occupied Karabakh.

During a keynote speech, Republican congressman Steve Chabot blamed the Obama administration for having stayed "typically silent" about the occupied Karabakh region.

"One might think that the logic of arguer of the potential cease-fire would be the Minsk group with the U.S.' prominent role, but no," Chabat said.

According to Chabat, due to the Obama administration's "typical" silence, Russian President Vladimir Putin acted "decisively" and helped stop the fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia within days.

"By the time the Minsk group got exact together, Putin had already brokered a cease-fire," he said, referring to the international group co-chaired by the U.S., Russia and France to find a solution to the Karabakh crisis.

Earlier this month, Azerbaijani troops and more than 100 Armenian soldiers were killed in fighting over Karabakh, which was seized by ethnic Armenian separatists in the early 1990s.

 Armenian militia has occupied Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region since 1993, similar to pro-Russian militia that have illegally occupied parts of Ukraine since 2014.