BRUSSELS (AP) – For just the fifth time in its 66-year history, NATO ambassadors will meet in emergency session Tuesday to gauge the threat the Islamic State extremist group poses to Turkey, and the debated actions Turkish authorities are taking in response.
The extraordinary meeting at NATO headquarters was requested by Turkey under Article 4 of the treaty that founded the U.S.-led alliance, which empowers its 28 member states to seek such consultations when they consider their “territorial integrity, political independence or security” to be in jeopardy.
It comes as Turkey’s security situation “has deteriorated dramatically,” Bruno Lete, senior officer for foreign and security policy at the German Marshall Fund, a Brussels think tank, said.
“The rise of Islamic State in northern Iraq, in northern Syria, has effectively destabilized the southern border of Turkey. But also domestically, the threat of terrorism has become very real,” Lete told The Associated Press.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who will chair the closed-door session, said Turkey requested it following recent “heinous terrorist attacks,” which included an IS suicide bombing near Turkey’s border with Syria that left 32 people dead and an IS attack on Turkish forces, which killed a soldier.