Denatofication: Turkey’s Defense-Industrial Autonomy and the Cirit Architecture of Greater Eurasia

1. Introduction

Turkey occupies a structurally unique position in contemporary international relations: it is simultaneously a NATO member in good standing since 1952, an SCO dialogue partner since 2013, a BRICS applicant, and the world’s leading exporter of armed drones. Scholars studying this configuration have converged on the concept of ‘strategic autonomy’ (Aydın-Düzgit, 2025; Comparative Strategy, 2024) — but the concept describes a behavioral disposition, not an institutional mechanism. It explains what Turkey does (hedge, balance, maintain dual partnerships) without explaining how the underlying structural contradiction could be resolved.

The structural contradiction is precise: Turkey’s military command reports to SACEUR in Brussels, while its nuclear assets at Incirlik Air Base are controlled by Washington — yet Ankara simultaneously pursues full SCO membership, whose security coordination operates through the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure in Tashkent. A state cannot simultaneously receive operational directives from NATO command and coordinate Central Asian security through SCO mechanisms. This is a geometric impossibility for coherent Eurasian architecture, not merely a policy inconsistency (Shlykov, 2026; Karaganov, 2016).

This article addresses the following research questions: (1) Does a historical template exist for partial withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military command while preserving political alliance membership? (2) Is Turkey’s defense-industrial transformation empirically consistent with the hypothesis of material denatofication? (3) What are the residual dependencies that constrain the translation of material autonomy into institutional form? (4) What does the 2026 NATO Ankara Summit reveal about the current state of Turkey’s structural position?

The gap in existing literature is twofold. First, the strategic autonomy scholarship (Aydın-Düzgit, 2025; Cooley and Nexon, 2020) has not specified the institutional mechanism by which Turkey’s structural contradiction could be resolved. Second, the empirical literature on Turkish defense localization has not been integrated with the theoretical framework of alliance theory (Morrow, 1991; Hurrell, 1995) or the historical record of partial NATO withdrawal. This article provides both the mechanism (denatofication) and its material evidence.

A clarification on terminology is necessary at the outset, because the analytical contribution of this article does not rest on coining a neologism. The term denatofication names a specific and previously unnamed object: not withdrawal from NATO as such (Article 13 exit, extensively studied), nor generic strategic hedging, but the sequenced process in which a member state builds the material capacity for autonomous military functioning prior to, and as the precondition for, any institutional withdrawal from integrated command. The existing literature has no term for this sequence because it has not identified the sequence itself — the standard assumption being that institutional rupture precedes material reconstruction (Section 3.6). The contribution is the identification of the reversed sequence and its indicators, not the label attached to it. The term is discarded if the sequence it names proves illusory; its test is analytical utility, not morphological novelty.

2. Study Design

This study is a narrative review. It explains and interprets the existing body of documented evidence on Turkey’s defense-industrial trajectory and the historical record of partial NATO withdrawal, synthesizing this material within a theoretical framework rather than generating new primary data. The narrative review format was selected deliberately over two alternatives. A systematic review — which searches the literature exhaustively against a pre-registered protocol to answer a narrowly bounded question — is inappropriate here because the research question is interpretive and structural rather than a bounded empirical query answerable by literature aggregation. A meta-analysis — which quantitatively combines effect sizes from comparable prior studies — is inapplicable because the object of study (a long-duration, singular geopolitical process) has no prior quantitative studies to combine. The narrative review is the appropriate design because denatofication, by definition, is a long-duration process (France’s lasted 43 years) whose mechanisms can only be identified through systematic comparison of historical cases and critical interpretation of documentary evidence.

Three methodological components structure the analysis.

First, historical comparison. France’s withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military command (1966–2009) and Greece’s withdrawal following the Cyprus crisis (1974–1980) serve as comparative cases. Selection criteria: both cases satisfy the structural signature of denatofication (withdrawal from military command while retaining political membership); they differ on nuclear status, motivation, and duration, enabling scope conditions to be identified. The French case is the primary template; the Greek case tests whether nuclear possession is a prerequisite.

Second, framework application. A three-level sovereignty framework is applied to Turkey’s empirical record: Level 1 (infrastructural sovereignty — defense-industrial base), Level 2 (institutional-routine sovereignty — command hierarchies, procurement), Level 3 (narrative sovereignty — conceptual self-designation). The framework structures the empirical material and operationalizes the concept of denatofication across measurable dimensions.

Third, indicator-based assessment. The Incirlik Paradox — two residual foreign vetoes over sovereign capabilities — provides falsifiable forward indicators. The denatofication thesis predicts that Turkey will move to resolve both dependencies: pressing for B61 warhead removal or sovereign control, and completing the indigenous KAAN engine. Progress or stagnation on these two indicators constitutes empirical confirmation or disconfirmation of the trajectory (the full falsification structure is specified in Section 3.4).

A note on the third sovereignty level is warranted to avoid a category error. Level 3 (narrative sovereignty) refers to an empirical property of the actor under study — whether Turkish policy discourse frames its own trajectory in sovereign terms or accepts externally imposed categories (‘rogue ally,’ ‘problem child’). It is a variable to be observed in Turkish sources, not a claim about this article. This study’s introduction of an analytical term is an act of scholarly description, not an instance of Turkish narrative sovereignty; the two operate at different levels and must not be conflated. The analytical vocabulary of the observer is not evidence about the object observed. This distinction is maintained throughout: where the article assesses narrative sovereignty, it does so by examining Turkish official framing, not by reference to its own terminology.

The study’s scope is limited to Turkey as the primary case within the CIRIT framework. It is a conceptual and comparative study; it does not conduct quantitative modeling, field interviews, or classified-source analysis. The evidence base consists of open-source defense budget data, weapons system specifications, legislative records, historical treaty analysis, and policy statements — all publicly available. The main limitation of this scope is discussed in the Conclusion.

A note on source-critical evaluation is warranted. The localization figures (20% to 80%) and budget data originate substantially from Turkish government and defense-industry sources, which have an institutional incentive to present the trajectory favorably. These figures are treated here as indicative of direction rather than as precise measurements, and are cross-referenced against independent assessments (SIPRI, 2025; NTI, 2025) and the observable fielding of specific weapons systems (Steel Dome, KAAN, Anadolu), whose existence and operational status are verifiable independently of Turkish self-reporting. Where a claim rests solely on a single official source, this is noted in the analysis. The weapons systems themselves — not the ratios attached to them — constitute the harder evidence for material denatofication, because a fielded sovereign air-defense network is a fact independent of the percentage claimed for it.

3. Results and Discussion

This section presents the study’s findings and interprets them against the four research questions posed in the Introduction and the literature reviewed there. The organization maps directly onto those questions: Section 3.1 answers RQ1 (does a historical template exist?) through the French and Greek precedents; Section 3.2 answers RQ2 (is Turkey’s transformation empirically consistent with material denatofication?) across six domains; Section 3.3 and Section 3.4 answer RQ3 (what residual dependencies constrain institutional translation?) through the CIRIT architecture and the Incirlik Paradox, the latter specifying the study’s falsification structure; and the Postscript addresses RQ4 (what does the 2026 Ankara Summit reveal?) by using the summit as a test of the thesis against its own strongest counter-evidence. Section 3.5 synthesizes the findings in a single table, and Section 3.6 situates them explicitly against the existing literature.

3.1. Historical Result (RQ1): The French and Greek Precedents Establish Denatofication’s Feasibility

The comparative historical analysis yields a first result: denatofication is institutionally feasible. France demonstrated that a NATO founding member could withdraw from the integrated military command for 43 years (1966–2009) while retaining political membership, Article 5 commitments, and North Atlantic Council participation (Meta-Defense, 2025). Greece demonstrated that denatofication is feasible without nuclear weapons, under reactive (rather than proactive) motivation, and within a shorter timeframe (1974–1980). Together the two cases establish three scope conditions: denatofication does not require nuclear possession; it is reversible (France rejoined in 2009; Greece in 1980); and it is executable even when technical integration with NATO is substantial.

The transferability objection — that NATO’s 2026 integration is far deeper than in 1966 or 1974 — is substantively correct but analytically insufficient. Greater technical integration increases transition costs, not infeasibility. France’s 1967 transition required relocating SHAPE headquarters within twelve months. Turkey’s transition would require three to five years of C4ISR decoupling — a longer timeline, but one that, as Section 3.2 shows, is already substantially in progress. The objection addresses the speed of denatofication, not its possibility.

3.2. Empirical Result (RQ2): Material Denatofication Is Observable Across Six Domains

The documentary analysis of Turkey’s defense-industrial record from 2000 to 2026 yields a second result: material denatofication is observable, not speculative. Six domains of evidence support this finding.

Defense localization. The single most telling metric is the inversion of the localization ratio: from approximately 20% domestic production in 2000 to over 80% by 2026. This trajectory is not ordinary modernization — its catalyst was an explicit alliance betrayal (the 2019 F-35 expulsion following S-400 acquisition), and its targets are specifically the systems through which NATO dependency operates. The 2026 defense budget stands at USD 27.34 billion, with nearly half directed to indigenous systems.

Air defense sovereignty. The Steel Dome (Çelik Kubbe) reduces a specific NATO dependency: reliance on the U.S. Patriot system for baseline coverage. The layered architecture (GÖKBERK laser for short-range; HİSAR family for medium-range up to 25 km; SİPER for long-range exceeding 100 km) is commanded by HAKİM — Turkey’s first fully national AI-driven air-command center. This qualification matters: during the March 2026 Iran-Israel war, when Iranian ballistic missiles repeatedly entered Turkish airspace, Turkey drew on allied Patriot batteries — Spanish, and a newly deployed U.S. unit at Malatya — as supplementary coverage against saturation-level ballistic threats, with a U.S. Navy destroyer conducting one intercept from the eastern Mediterranean. This does not contradict the material-denatofication finding; it specifies its present limit. SİPER-2, the long-range tier capable of countering ballistic (not merely cruise or drone) threats at scale, remains in state trials rather than full deployment. The correct claim is therefore that Steel Dome has substantially reduced routine dependency on the Patriot, not eliminated it for high-intensity, multi-vector ballistic scenarios — a distinction consistent with the article’s broader claim that material denatofication is advanced but incomplete (Section 3.4).

Air power. KAAN, Turkey’s fifth-generation fighter, has entered serial-production preparation as of April 2026. The platform is designed as an aerial command node directing unmanned wingmen — a new tactic of air combat. The current dependency is the GE powerplant; an indigenous engine is in ground testing. KAAN is infrastructurally incomplete until the engine dependency is resolved.

Naval autonomy. The Anadolu drone-carrier — the world’s first purpose-built such platform — demonstrated in a February 2026 NATO Baltic exercise that Turkey can sustain full carrier-tempo operations in conditions that grounded allied aviation. The April 2026 Mavi Vatan exercises featured first combat employment of the indigenous AKYA heavy torpedo. Turkey’s fleet has ceased to be a coastal-defense force.

Mobilization economy. Through 2025–2026, Turkey enacted legislation enabling the president to declare partial economic mobilization without parliamentary debate, converting private enterprises into defense assets on demand. First-quarter 2026 production of powder and explosives tripled. This is the juridical complement to material denatofication.

Forward-base network. Turkey operates autonomous force projection in Mogadishu (TURKSOM), Libya (al-Watiya), the Persian Gulf (~5,000 personnel), and a drone-hub corridor from the Balkans to the Caspian — all outside NATO command authority.

3.3. Structural Result (RQ3, Part 1): The CIRIT Architecture and the C5 Subjective Core

The third result is structural: the CIRIT framework (China, India, Russia, Iran, Turkey) specifies the civilizational-geometric architecture in which Turkey’s denatofication is not an isolated event but the keystone that completes the outer pentagon. CIRIT is historically unprecedented in that all five poles are nuclear powers or nuclear-threshold states (SIPRI, 2025). The Central Asian C5 (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) constitutes the inner core — simultaneously touching all five outer poles through borders, language, energy flows, and water systems (Rakhimov and Mikhalev, 2023, 2024). The SCO cannot reform itself into the vehicle for this architecture due to path-dependent institutional constraints (Pierson, 2000); denatofication is the structural precondition for CIRIT’s operationalization. The formula GEP 2.0 = SCO+ (Turkey − NATO) is not metaphor but an operational specification.

The framework’s most contested boundary decision — the inclusion of Turkey and exclusion of Pakistan, a nuclear power and SCO full member — requires an operational criterion applied ex ante rather than a post hoc rationalization. The criterion is defense-industrial import dependency on a single external supplier, measured as the share of major weapons platforms sourced from one state. This is a measurable, source-verifiable variable, not an interpretive judgment. By SIPRI arms-transfer data, Pakistan sources the majority of its major platforms (JF-17 co-produced with and dependent on Chinese components; naval frigates; air-defense systems) from a single supplier, China, creating structural dependency on one external pole. Turkey, by contrast, has inverted precisely this dependency — the 80% localization documented in Section 3.2 is the empirical content of the criterion. The distinction is therefore not that Pakistan lacks civilizational depth (it has it) but that its defense-industrial base fails the single-supplier-independence test that Turkey passes. Applied consistently, the same criterion would exclude any state whose military capacity is monopolized by one external patron, regardless of civilizational weight. This makes the boundary falsifiable: were Pakistan to diversify its defense-industrial base below majority single-supplier dependency, the criterion would admit it.

3.4. Constraint Result (RQ3, Part 2): The Incirlik Paradox Defines the Unfinished Frontier

The fourth result is diagnostic: Turkey’s trajectory is advanced but incomplete. Two residual dependencies — structurally identical in form — define the unfinished frontier. The first is institutional-nuclear: approximately 50 U.S. B61 warheads at Incirlik Air Base, under U.S. Physical Access Control, which Turkey hosts but cannot employ without Washington’s authorization. The second is technical-industrial: GE engines powering the KAAN prototypes, which subject Turkey’s most advanced weapons program to U.S. export-control authority. Both share the same structure: Turkey possesses the platform but not control over the decisive component.

The Incirlik Paradox yields a falsifiable prediction structure, and it is essential to specify what would disconfirm the thesis, not only what would confirm it. The denatofication thesis predicts continued movement toward resolving both dependencies. This movement can take either of two forms, and — critically — a third outcome would falsify the thesis:

(a) Confirmation via negotiated resolution. Turkey secures sovereign control or removal of the constraint (B61 removal on the French precedent; a concluded engine-supply arrangement that transfers production authority). The dependency is resolved through negotiation.

(b) Confirmation via indigenous substitution. Negotiation fails, and Turkey accelerates domestic replacement (the indigenous engine reaches flight qualification; a sovereign nuclear posture is pursued). The dependency is resolved through autarky. Both (a) and (b) confirm the trajectory, differing only in mechanism and timeline.

(c) Disconfirmation. Turkey abandons the indigenous engine program and accepts indefinite, unmitigated GE dependency for its frontline fighter, while simultaneously permitting foreign control of the Incirlik warheads to persist without contestation — and does so while running down, rather than expanding, the localization ratio. This outcome would demonstrate that the observed defense-industrial activity was ordinary modernization or leverage-seeking within a stable alliance, not a sequenced trajectory toward autonomy. The thesis stands or falls on this distinction. If, five years hence, Turkey flies KAAN on foreign engines by choice, has ceased indigenous engine development, and has allowed its localization ratio to decline, the denatofication thesis is refuted. The prediction is therefore not merely that autonomy-consistent events will occur, but that dependency-deepening-by-choice will not.

This falsification structure directly addresses the objection that the thesis is unfalsifiable — that any Turkish behavior could be read as confirmation. It cannot: sustained, voluntary deepening of single-supplier dependency, coupled with a declining localization trajectory, is a specifiable outcome that the thesis forbids.

3.5. Synthesis Table

Table 1 synthesizes the principal findings across all four results and positions them relative to the existing literature.

Table 1.

Domain	Finding	Indicator	Literature Position
Historical precedent	Denatofication feasible: France 43 yrs, Greece 6 yrs	Structural signature: political membership retained + military command withdrawn	Extends alliance theory (Morrow, 1991); corrects binary NATO-exit framing
Defense localization	20%→80% inversion, 2000–2026	Domestic procurement share; export revenues >$8.5bn	Beyond ‘strategic autonomy’ (Aydın-Düzgit, 2025): autonomy as observable trajectory
Air defense	Steel Dome / HAKİM reduces routine NATINADS/Patriot dependency	SİPER-2 in trials, not full deployment; March 2026 crisis required allied Patriot supplement	First national AI-command layer in NATO; dependency reduced, not yet eliminated at scale
Forward presence	6 autonomous bases/hubs outside NATO command	TURKSOM; al-Watiya; Gulf contingent; Turkic drone corridor	Extends Cooley and Nexon (2020): exit from hegemony via parallel capacity
Incirlik Paradox	2 residual foreign vetoes; gating condition for institutional denatofication	B61 warhead status; KAAN indigenous engine timeline	New falsifiable indicator; refines Aydın-Düzgit (2025) strategic autonomy concept
Ankara Summit 2026	F-110/CAATSA = mechanism (a) attempt on command axis; DSRB/5% GDP/SAFE = separate industrial-financial axis; S-400 not surrendered	Engine/CAATSA outcome; indigenous engine status; localization trend; S-400 status	Two-axis distinction (Level 1 vs Level 2) resolves apparent contradiction; sharpens structural-ambivalence thesis

3.6. Comparison with Existing Literature

This study advances beyond the existing literature in three respects.

First, it operationalizes strategic autonomy. The concept in its current form (Aydın-Düzgit, 2025; Comparative Strategy, 2024) describes Turkey’s behavioral disposition without specifying the institutional mechanism by which the structural contradiction could be resolved. Denatofication is that mechanism — not a synonym for strategic autonomy but its institutional specification. The relationship is hierarchical: denatofication is what strategic autonomy becomes when it acquires institutional form.

Second, it reverses the assumed sequence in alliance theory. Standard alliance exit theory (Morrow, 1991) assumes that institutional rupture precedes material adjustment — a state first leaves an alliance, then rebuilds its military independently. The Turkish case shows the opposite: material autonomy is being built first, before any institutional decision, as the precondition that would make institutional denatofication non-catastrophic. This finding has implications beyond Turkey: it suggests a general pattern of ‘exit preparation’ that may be observable in other alliance relationships.

Third, it provides a falsifiable indicator set where previous treatments offered only interpretive frameworks. The Incirlik Paradox converts a sprawling ‘will Turkey leave NATO?’ debate into two observable measurements. This is methodologically significant: it transforms a question of political forecasting into a question of empirical monitoring.

The study’s findings are consistent with Cooley and Nexon’s (2020) ‘exit from hegemony’ framework — Turkey’s trajectory is exactly the kind of accumulated parallel-capacity building they describe. It is also consistent with Pierson’s (2000) path-dependency argument, which explains why the SCO cannot be reformed to absorb Turkey’s contradiction without institutional redesign.

4. Conclusion

This study examined whether Turkey’s defense-industrial transformation constitutes material denatofication — an observable precursor to formal disengagement from NATO’s integrated military command — and whether historical precedent supports the feasibility of such a process. The evidence supports both claims. Material denatofication is documented across six domains; the French and Greek precedents establish feasibility; the Incirlik Paradox identifies the two residual constraints. The research questions posed in the Introduction can now be answered: historical templates exist; Turkey’s transformation is empirically consistent with material denatofication; two specific residual dependencies constrain institutional translation; and the 2026 NATO Ankara Summit provided real-time confirmation of structural ambivalence.

4.1. Theoretical Implications

The principal theoretical contribution is the concept of sequenced denatofication: material disengagement from alliance dependencies precedes and enables institutional disengagement. This reverses the standard assumption in alliance exit theory, which treats institutional rupture as the primary event and material adjustment as its consequence. If the Turkish case generalizes, it implies that alliance analysts should monitor the material-infrastructural dimension of member state behavior — not merely political signals — as the leading indicator of exit trajectories.

The three-level sovereignty framework (infrastructural, institutional, narrative) provides a replicable analytical instrument. It can be applied to other cases of ‘partial alliance membership’ — India’s position vis-à-vis the Quad, Hungary’s within NATO, Serbia’s EU relationship — wherever a state manages simultaneous institutional commitments that create structural contradictions.

The CIRIT framework contributes a civilizational-geometric complement to existing institutional analyses of Eurasian regionalism. By specifying the nuclear-threshold contour and the C5 subjective core, it provides a structural level of analysis that SCO, EAEU, and BRICS scholarship — all focused on institutional membership — does not capture.

4.2. Policy Implications

For NATO policymakers, the study’s most consequential implication is that Turkey’s structural ambivalence is not a temporary political problem amenable to management through bilateral gestures. It is an architecturally reproduced condition whose institutional resolution requires a structural decision — not on Turkey’s part alone, but on the alliance’s definition of what ‘membership’ entails. The French precedent (43 years of partial membership) suggests that NATO can accommodate significant structural heterogeneity if it chooses to define membership along a spectrum rather than as a binary.

For the Ankara Summit negotiators, the F-110 engine deal for KAAN represents a specific policy opportunity: if concluded, it would partially resolve the industrial component of the Incirlik Paradox and remove one of the two residual foreign vetoes over Turkish sovereign capability. Conversely, failure to conclude the deal would likely accelerate the indigenous engine program, producing the same result via a longer timeline. The policy leverage window is finite.

For Central Asian states, the C5 × CIRIT framework implies that Turkey’s eventual structural repositioning — whether toward or away from NATO’s integrated command — will affect the balance of great-power competition in their immediate environment. Kazakhstan’s uranium resources, Kyrgyzstan’s and Tajikistan’s water control, and Turkmenistan’s gas exports all acquire different geopolitical valence depending on whether the outer CIRIT contour achieves operational coherence. C5 states have a structural interest in the denatofication outcome that is rarely acknowledged in regional policy discussions.

4.3. Limitations and Future Research

This study has four substantive limitations that future research should address.

First, evidentiary base. The study relies on open-source documentary evidence. The C4ISR integration costs of Turkish withdrawal from NATO’s integrated command — the precise technical systems requiring decoupling, their timelines, and their operational risks — require classified-access study that this analysis cannot conduct. The finding that ‘decoupling is substantially in progress’ is supported by open-source evidence but cannot be fully quantified.

Second, causal inference. The study demonstrates correlation between Turkey’s stated motivation for defense localization (alliance betrayal as catalyst) and the material trajectory, but formal causal identification requires elimination of alternative explanations — including the possibility that the 80% localization represents ordinary great-power modernization unrelated to NATO disengagement intent. Future research should design tests to distinguish between ‘insurance-seeking’ and ‘exit-preparing’ interpretations of the same material trajectory.

Third, economic sustainability. The military Keynesianism model (large state investment in defense generating civilian technology spillovers) carries the risk documented in the Soviet case: defense expenditure outpacing civilian growth until the material base buckles. Whether Turkey’s civilian economy can sustain the military load is a macroeconomic question this study cannot answer. The denatofication thesis is conditional: if the economy sustains the trajectory, the material precondition is met; if not, the trajectory may arrest before institutional form is reached.

Fourth, CIRIT operationalization. The framework’s boundary decisions — notably the exclusion of Pakistan in favor of Turkey — are defended conceptually but require stronger methodological justification through systematic comparative testing. Future research should develop a formal operationalization of ‘civilizational pole’ status using measurable criteria.

Three directions for future research follow. Operational study: the precise legal frameworks, timelines, and military-planning requirements of Turkish withdrawal from integrated command. Comparative extension: testing whether the sequenced denatofication pattern (material precedes institutional) is observable in other cases — Hungary within NATO, India within the Quad, Serbia vis-à-vis the EU. Scenario modeling: the second-order effects of Turkish denatofication on Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, using game-theoretic and wargaming approaches.

5. Postscript: The 2026 Nato Ankara Summit as a Test of the Thesis

The 2026 NATO Summit, held in Ankara on 7–8 July 2026, occurred after this article’s main analysis was complete. Rather than treat it as confirmation, this postscript uses it as a test — including of the thesis’s most serious vulnerability. An honest reading of the summit reveals evidence that appears, at first, to contradict the denatofication argument. That apparent contradiction is examined directly.

The apparent contradiction

At the Ankara Summit, Turkey’s principal agenda item was the acquisition of F-110 jet engines from the United States for the KAAN program, alongside reported interest in a currency-swap line with the U.S. Federal Reserve and access to the EU’s defense procurement system (Foreign Policy, 2026; Fox News, 2026). On its face, this is damaging to the thesis. A state pursuing material autonomy appears instead to be petitioning its patron for deeper integration into Western supply chains, Western finance, and Western procurement. If denatofication means building independence, why is Ankara asking Washington for engines?

This is the strongest empirical challenge the thesis faces, and it must not be waved away. Taken naively, the F-110 request looks like the opposite of autonomy — like dependency reasserting itself the moment a real capability gap (the engine) is exposed.

Why the contradiction dissolves under the falsification structure

The apparent contradiction dissolves precisely because of the falsification structure specified in Section 3.4. The thesis does not predict that Turkey pursues autarky at all costs. It predicts that Turkey moves to resolve the two Incirlik dependencies through one of two mechanisms — negotiated resolution (a) or indigenous substitution (b) — and it is falsified only by dependency-deepening-by-choice (c). The F-110 request is a textbook instance of mechanism (a): an attempt to convert a foreign-controlled component into a secured supply on more sovereign terms. Crucially, the indigenous engine program continues in parallel and has not been abandoned; the localization ratio continues to rise, not fall. The summit behavior therefore falls squarely within the confirming region of the prediction, not the disconfirming one.

The decisive analytical point is that the F-110 negotiation is only intelligible as leverage because the indigenous alternative exists. A state with no domestic engine program and no path to one would have no bargaining position — it would take whatever terms Washington offered. Turkey negotiates from strength precisely because material denatofication is already advanced: the credible threat of indigenous substitution is what gives the engine request its leverage. This is not dependency reasserting itself; it is the conversion of accumulated material autonomy into negotiating power. The correct test is not whether Turkey asks for the engine, but what happens to the indigenous program if the request is refused. The thesis predicts acceleration, not abandonment.

Two axes: why the apparent contradiction is a category confusion

The resolution above (leverage from credible substitution) is necessary but not sufficient. A second, independent confusion must be separated out, because the weeks around the Ankara Summit produced a cluster of developments that are easy to misread as evidence of deepening NATO integration: the announced lifting of CAATSA sanctions, Turkey’s founding membership in the new Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), a pledge to reach 5% of GDP in defense spending by 2030 — five years ahead of the alliance-wide 2035 deadline — and Erdoğan’s public request for Turkish access to the EU’s SAFE defense-procurement instrument. None of these developments bear on the specific institutional claim this article makes, because none of them touch NATO’s integrated military command. They belong to a different axis entirely, and the three-level sovereignty framework introduced in Section 2 (Study Design) exists precisely to keep these axes distinct.

CAATSA and the F-35/F-110 questions are a bilateral U.S.–Turkey sanctions matter, not a NATO command-structure matter; the DSRB is a Canada-led multilateral financing vehicle for defense-industrial capacity, orthogonal to command authority; the 5% GDP pledge is a defense-spending commitment under the alliance’s Hague framework, not a claim on operational command; and SAFE is an instrument of the European Union, an institution Turkey is not a member of and to which NATO’s integrated military command is not the relevant gatekeeper. Turkey pursuing deeper integration on the financial, industrial, and procurement axis while pursuing structural disengagement from the operational command axis is not a contradiction — it is precisely what the sovereignty framework predicts. Level 1 (infrastructural) autonomy is compatible with, and indeed is financed partly through, deeper participation in allied industrial and capital markets. Level 2 (institutional-routine, command-chain) autonomy is a separate variable, addressed by the Incirlik Paradox indicators specifically, not by financial or industrial metrics. A state can simultaneously ask for more market access and prepare for more command-structure independence; these are not the same axis, and conflating them is the source of the apparent contradiction.

Read this way, the CAATSA episode becomes, if anything, sharper evidence for the structural-ambivalence thesis than a simple confirmation would be. Trump announced an intention to lift sanctions and ‘certainly consider’ returning Turkey to the F-35 program — but Turkey has given no indication of relinquishing the S-400 system that triggered the sanctions in the first place, and the 2020 NDAA legally requires certification that Turkey ‘no longer possesses’ the S-400 before F-35 transfers can resume. Analysts have noted that Washington and Ankara may instead be negotiating an arrangement to render the S-400 ‘inoperative’ rather than removed. This is structural ambivalence in its purest form: Turkey seeking simultaneous access to Russian and American frontline systems, without formally surrendering either. It is not a retreat from multi-vector positioning; it is multi-vector positioning executing at the highest level of stakes yet observed.

First, the Incirlik Paradox is validated as the correct analytical focus. The single most important item on Turkey’s summit agenda was, precisely, one half of the Paradox identified independently in Section 3.4 before the summit occurred. The engine dependency the article named as one of two gating constraints turned out to be the central bilateral issue — a non-trivial predictive success. Netanyahu’s public opposition to the sale (Boston Globe, 2026) illustrates the political friction surrounding even the less sensitive of the two dependencies; the more sensitive — the B61 warheads — was not formally tabled, consistent with the article’s claim that it is the harder constraint.

Second, structural ambivalence was publicly confirmed at the highest level. Sinan Ciddi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies stated at a summit briefing that Turkey is the only NATO member to have applied for membership in both the SCO and BRICS (Fox News, 2026). The S-400 system remains in Turkish possession after seven years of alliance pressure. These are not tactical inconsistencies to be managed; they are the observable trace of the structural trajectory the article describes.

Third, the leverage dynamic was visible in Trump’s framing. Trump stated he was attending the summit ‘because of Erdoğan’ (Fox News, 2026) — a signal that Turkey is shifting from ‘problem child to be disciplined’ toward ‘indispensable partner to be accommodated.’ This shift is exactly what the thesis predicts: a state that has built material autonomy negotiates from a different position than a dependent ally, and can extract concessions unavailable to a subordinate.

The open indicator is the outcome itself. At the time of writing, the F-110 deal’s conclusion, the fate of the indigenous engine program, and the post-summit status of the S-400 remain unresolved. These are precisely the variables the falsification structure identifies as decisive. The article’s prediction is explicit and testable: whatever the engine outcome, the indigenous program will not be abandoned and the localization ratio will not decline. Should both occur together, the thesis is refuted. The Ankara Summit thus does not close the question; it sharpens it into exactly the measurable form the study proposed.