Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former Pentagon official, has for years been waging a systematic campaign to influence Western public opinion, fuelling a sense of urgency to legitimise pre-emptive military action by the US or Israel against Türkiye, which is portrayed as a global threat, accused of developing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian programme and using NATO as a shield. In this April 2025 interview on Washington Watch, hosted by Tony Perkins, Rubin was explicit: Ankara would act as a Trojan horse within the Alliance, exploiting the rule of unanimous consent to paralyse it from within in favour of external actors or its own alleged ideological agenda. He cited as an example a scenario, anticipating the war with Iran by a year, in which Türkiye might oppose collective action by obstructing American objectives. Rubin further argues that Ankara is not merely dead weight but would use NATO and Article 5 as a shield to conceal the development of nuclear weapons. However, such alarmism clashes with reality. Türkiye imports 75% of its energy and is striving for energy self-sufficiency. The civil nuclear programme has been in the pipeline since the 1970s, and the contract awarded to Russia's Rosatom for the Akkuyu power station was driven by commercial considerations: the Russians submitted the most advantageous bid. For the Sinop plant, Ankara is seriously considering proposals from the USA, with whom it signed a Memorandum of Understanding on civil nuclear cooperation last September and is in talks with China regarding a third plant at Igneada. - @thule.talks