Ret. Adm. Stavridis: "One of the Real Winners" of Failed Turkish Coup Is ISIS

Retired U.S. Navy Admiral and Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University James Stavridis talks to CNN about the attempted coup in Turkey and what it means going forward for NATO and the fight against ISIS in the Middle East.

JAMES STAVRIDIS: Turkey is an enormous ally of the United States, a huge part of NATO. When I was Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, Turkey was involved in every operation: Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, Syria, piracy. So to see a nation that big, that important, embedded in a critical region, go through a major coup is a shocking, shocking development.

And we ought to be concerned back here because if Turkey slips into a position of real instability, it's going to be Katy bar the door on waves of immigrants moving across Europe. We're not at that point. I don't predict that. The authorities seem to be in control, but there are knock-on impacts that are significant here.

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This is a very bad moment in the fight against ISIS, unfortunately. Why? Because a great deal of the military effort is moving out of bases in southern Turkey. We do have other alternatives to continue the fight, but the freezing of cooperation along that border, I think, is a real possibility, as our Turkish colleagues sort through the challenges.

Secondly, the Turkish military itself will be consumed with investigations, retribution, arrests. They will lose their effectiveness as a fighting force in this. So one of the real winners here, if there’s any winner in a coup, is going to be the so-called Islamic State.