Is Albania replicating Turkey and Qatar’s teflon strategy?

Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not fear provoking Europe or the United States. He blackmailed NATO to get more jetfighters and force Sweden to return peaceful dissidents to torture and imprison. He withholds F-35 joint strike fighter schematics that contractually he must return, raising concern he could sell them to Russia or China or use them to bolster his son-in-law’s military manufacturer.

Turkish troops militarily occupy parts of Cyprus, Syria, and Iraq with an ultimate goal of Anschluss and openly contests Greek and Armenian territory. Erdogan used the visit of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to double down on Hamas. Such support for terror is the rule rather than the exception.

Erdogan transferred weaponry to Al Qaeda factions in Syria, and gave sustenance to the Islamic State. Turkey transferred Syrian and Libyan mercenaries to Nagorno-Karabakh during Azerbaijan and Turkey’s ethnic cleansing campaign against the region’s indigenous Armenian Christians. Meanwhile, Turkey has become the world’s greater jailer of journalists and among the worst violators of religious freedom.

Any single factor would doom U.S. relations with a normal country, but Turkey has an ace up its sleeve: The Incirlik Air Base. While the base no longer serves the strategic purpose it did at the height of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force is loath to give up any asset. When Erdogan’s behavior makes Turkey the subject of debate at the National Security Council, the Secretary of Defense often dilutes any action that would upset Turkey and could affect the American ability to access the base. In effect, Incirlik has become Turkey’s get-out-of-jail free card. It is a devil’s bargain: Host the American military to win immunity from American coercion. 

Turkey may have developed the strategy, but others have now caught on. Following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the United States began utilizing Qatar’s al-Udeid Air Base. For the Pentagon, it was the right gift and the right time. The spotlight on Bin Laden and Saudi Arabia’s own internal extremist problem led the Saudi government to show the U.S. military the exit. Qatar laid out the red carpet. Qatar renovated the base to better accommodate U.S. forces and subsidizes much of the U.S. presence.

Over the last two decades, Qatar’s sponsorship of terror groups and Islamist movements grew proportionately to the U.S. presence in the tiny gas giant. The Qatari emir quickly learned that he could even support and finance groups killing Americans, and he would suffer no consequence so long as he played host to the Pentagon. Qatar might tick every box to be designated a state sponsor of terror, but successive secretaries of Defense cannot see the forest through the trees. They prioritize protecting the assets they control over a broader recognition of American national security. 

Albania may today be the latest country to embrace the strategy. Under Prime Minister Edi Rama, Albania has turned away from democracy. Rama imprisons politicians like Fredi Beleri because he gets in the way of his own corruption schemes, and twists U.S. anti-corruption programs upside down to sideline rivals like Arben Ahmetaj, a former deputy prime minister whose star became too much of a challenge. Strip away Erdogan’s Islamist ideology, and Rama is a political doppelganger. 

Rama has dominated Albania for over a decade, and appears to desire to remain another two, regardless of the will of the Albanian people. Perhaps this is why he now replicates the Turkey and Qatar basing strategy. On March 4, 2024, Albania officially reopened the Kuçova Air Base 85 kilometers south of Tirana to be a NATO logistics and air operations hub. After Rama officially opened the base, two U.S. F-16s and two F-35s ceremonially overflew the base.

With Russia on the warpath in Ukraine and threatening Moldova, and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić competing to be a second Alexander Lukashenko, it is understandable NATO would want a base in the region. But they should carefully consider: Is U.S. and NATO access to Kuçova worth rubberstamping a second Erdogan and turning a blind eye away from Albania’s retreat from democracy? 

Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.