BRUSSELS _ Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's crackdown after a failed coup prompted doubts about the country's longstanding place in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and eligibility for eventual European Union membership.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said NATO would assess whether Turkey upholds democratic values amid a wave of arrests tied to last Friday night's attempt by a group of Turkish military rebels to overthrow Erdogan.
"NATO also has a requirement with respect to democracy and NATO will indeed measure very carefully what is happening," Kerry told reporters on Monday in Brussels after attending a meeting of EU foreign ministers. "A lot of people have been arrested and arrested very quickly," he said, adding that "the level of vigilance and scrutiny is obviously going to be significant in the days ahead."
Erdogan's widespread purge has reinforced worries in the West about democratic backsliding in Turkey, which plays a strategic role for the U.S. and the EU in a region where Syria's civil war, Islamic State terrorism and mass refugee flows have caused upheaval. Within hours of the coup's failure, more than 2,800 soldiers and officers had been arrested.
Erdogan's base of religious domestic support was on display in Istanbul over the weekend when a crowd turned out to hear a speech by the president and chanted "we want the death penalty." The prospect of Turkey introducing capital punishment in response to the coup prompted a warning from Federica Mogherini of the EU, which Turkey has been negotiating to join since 2005 and which prohibits the death penalty.
"No country can become an EU member state if it introduces the death penalty, that is very clear," Mogherini, the 28-nation bloc's foreign-policy chief, told reporters with Kerry standing alongside her.
