\u201cAll allies have criticized the operation, but no one questioned Turkey\u2019s place in NATO,\u201d Stoltenberg told the paper, referring to Operation Peace Spring launched by Turkey in October.<\/p>\n
\u201cTurkey joined the struggle against Daesh by allowing its allies to use their bases. Turkey, the only country in NATO on the border with Syria and Iraq,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTurkey accommodates 3.6 million migrants. Turkey is very important for NATO. To understanding this, [we] need to look at the map and examine the geostrategic situation in Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stoltenberg also addressed French President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s criticism of the alliance, in which Macron described NATO as \u201cbrain dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNATO is vital for security issues. It proved this by protecting almost a billion people for decades,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Stoltenberg stressed that NATO is not a competitor with the European Union.<\/p>\n
He noted that Canada, England, Iceland, Norway, Turkey and the U.S. are playing an important role in European security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg highlighted the importance of Turkey for the alliance in an interview Thursday with French newspaper Le Figaro. \u201cAll allies have criticized the operation, but no one questioned Turkey\u2019s place in NATO,\u201d Stoltenberg told the paper, referring to Operation Peace Spring launched by Turkey in October. \u201cTurkey joined the struggle against …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":64492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,80,63,17,1,118,101,194,173,188],"tags":[75116,25860],"class_list":["post-64491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-europe","category-general","category-hot","category-politics","category-turkey-general","category-turkey-headlines","category-turkey-politics","tag-nato-secretary-general-stoltenberg","tag-nato-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}