Is Turkey’s Military the World’s Latest Paper Tiger?

A video circulating on Telegram and other social media suggests North Korean Special Forces dispatched to fight Ukraine on Russia’s behalf have seen their first combat. The video purports to interview the single North Korean survivor from a unit of 40 compatriots who encountered Ukrainian forces near the Ukraine-occupied Russian town of Kursk. While unclear if the video is authentic—some suggest it is psychological warfare—it is believable. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urges the world to intercede before more North Korean units can reach the battlefield, military analysts wait to see how North Koreans do in battle. After all, despite their fearsome displays and bellicose rhetoric, it has been decades since the North Korean Army engaged in open combat. North Koreans are increasingly shorter and lighter than their South Korean neighbors are.

North Korea is not the only country that coasts on reputation. As much as the United States fears China’s rise, the fighting ability of the People’s Liberation Army is an unknown. It is perhaps the only army in the world entirely comprised of only children. The last time the People’s Republic of China fought an open war—a month-long conflict with Vietnam in 1979—China lost. Since then, China has only engaged small and unarmed or only lightly armed opponents—Filipino coast guard speedboats, Vietnamese fishing boats, or small squads of Indian soldiers high up in the Himalayas. China can bluster about conquering Taiwan. The People’s Liberation Army can cause incredible devastation with missiles and drones, but their ability to occupy the country is a different matter. The second the People’s Liberation Army engages, Beijing knows, their carefully crafted image of invincibility might crater.

Russia has been another paper tiger. As Russian forces massed on the Ukrainian border in February 2022, President Joe Biden and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan urged Zelensky to surrender preemptively and flee the country. The intelligence briefings Biden and Sullivan received from the U.S. intelligence community grossly exaggerated the capabilities of the Russian army. Rather than march triumphantly through Kyiv, the Russian Army today loses every two months more than the United States lost in the entire Vietnam War. Russia might still win, but not as it envisioned. Rather, it will simply seek to outlast its Ukrainian opponents in a new Stalingrad. The Kremlin might have sold an image of itself as a first world military capable of shock and awe, but what it showed the world was not much different from Russian forces in World War I.

The Saddam-era Iraqi Army was also a paper tiger. In the lead up to the 1991 Operation Desert Storm and the liberation of Kuwait, Iraq had the fifth largest army in the world. Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confused size with competence and sought a diplomatic compromise with Iraq, a proposal President George H.W. Bush wisely rejected. The subsequent decimation of Iraq’s army showed what a paper tiger they had been.

While North Korea, China, Russia, and Saddam-era Iraq are or were all U.S. adversaries, the same dynamics may also apply to NATO. The Turkish military forms the second largest force component within NATO, after the United States. Diplomats, analysts, and Turkey’s lobbyists on K Street and in Washington think tanks conflate Turkey’s military power and strategic importance, but seldom consider if Turkey’s military power is real.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took a formidable military and sought to remake it in his own image. To expedite its transformation, he cited various conspiracies as fact, culminating in the “Reichstag Fire coup.” The result of Erdogan’s purges has been the prioritization of politics over competence. One-in-five Turkish F-16 pilots, for example, ended up in prison; their replacements had a fraction of their imprisoned colleagues’ experience.

The same is true with Turkey’s Ground Forces. While Turkish forces have pushed into Syria into some Kurdish districts of Syria, they only do so with proxies or against lightly armed opponents. While Turkey has waged war against Syrian Kurds’ civilian infrastructure such as oil pipelines and electrical substations or Yezidi farms across the border in Iraq, the Turkish military has failed to engage the Islamic State. There are two possible explanations for this: Either Turkey as a whole or certain commanders do not consider the Islamic State to be an enemy or Turkish commanders fear directly engaging the Islamic State would expose the weakness of Turkey’s post-Erdogan ground forces.

Here, Libya provides some clues where the Wagner Group effectively has held NATO’s second largest military to a draw. The state-controlled Turkish media will cite its air support for Azerbaijan’s assault on Armenians or provision of drones to Ukraine, but neither of these supposed successes involved the deployment of Turkish troops with the exception perhaps of some Special Forces to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Too often, the United States self-deters in the face of paper tigers in a way that empowers them. In effect, the United States might hold a full house militarily, but it folds before a pair of twos. Turkey today presents another problem, however, since it is nominally an ally rather than adversary. While Erdogan seeks benefit from an illusion of strength, it is time to question whether the size of Turkey’s military mattes if it has effectively become a third world force, little different than Iraq 1991 or Russia 2022. If so, then perhaps the next administration must recalculate the deference to which Turkey is due and even such basic questions about whether the Syrian Kurds, if properly armed, can contribute more to regional security than Turkish troops whose illusion of power will dissipate the moment they leave their barracks.

About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and pre-and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For over a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism to deployed US Navy and Marine units. Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics. The opinions and views expressed are his own.