As Turkey prepares for the second Donald Trump presidency, Ankara will be mindful that the president-elect’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, asked in a recent book: “Why is Islamist Turkey a member of Nato?”

Elsewhere in the book, American Crusade (AC), published in 2020, Hegseth argues that the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “openly dreams of restoring the Ottoman empire” and is “an Islamist with Islamist visions for the Middle East”.

Erdogan, a bitter foe of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he has described as a “Hitler” and a “psychopath” in fiery remarks on “Israeli war crimes” in the Gaza conflict, may be alarmed at just how pro-Israel Hegseth is in AC.

Hegseth, who has a tattoo of the crusader motto “Deus vult” (“God wills it”), writes: “We Christians – alongside our Jewish friends and their remarkable army in Israel – need to pick up the sword of unapologetic Americanism and defend ourselves.”

A Fox News TV presenter, author and former US Army National Guard officer, 44-year-old Hegseth continues: “For us as American crusaders, Israel embodies the soul of our American crusade – the ‘why’ to our ‘what’.”

And he concludes: “Faith, family, freedom, and free enterprise; if you love those, learn to love the state of Israel. And then find an arena in which to fight for her.”

In reporting the excerpts, the Guardian approached Tom Hill, executive director of the Center for Peace and Diplomacy (CPD), for comment. He told the newspaper that Hegseth’s nomination reflected the fact that for Trump “one of the bases of support he owes is the Christian nationalist evangelical movement”. In Hegseth, he added, “what he is offering is Israel policy and a warping of foreign policy around Israel as a reward to this Christian nationalist base”.

Those who fear that Trump, after he returns to the Oval Office on January 20, could move to break up Nato, partly on the basis that the US’ allies in the defence bloc are not paying their way, also have the following comment from Hegseth to digest: “Nato is not an alliance; it’s a defense arrangement for Europe, paid for and underwritten by the United States.”

He adds: “Nato is a relic and should be scrapped and remade in order for freedom to be truly defended. This is what Trump is fighting for.”

In another of his books, 2024’s The War on Warriors, Hegseth contends that US forces should ignore the Geneva conventions and other parts of international law governing the conduct of war. “What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us?” he asks. “Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism? Hey, Al Qaeda: if you surrender, we might spare your life. If you do not, we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs.”

On November 25, The Media Line reported on how Trump’s staunch pro-Israel cabinet picks could strain US relations with Turkey.

Gulru Gezer, who previously served as Turkey’s consul general in Los Angeles but is presently director of the foreign policy programme at The Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkiye in Ankara, told the publication that an emboldened Netanyahu could lead to a regional war in the Middle East, presenting risks for Ankara, particularly if it involves Iran, which borders Turkey.

He was cited as saying: “I think now obviously they [the incoming Trump officials] have an extremely pro-Israeli stance, and of course, I’m wondering how they’re going to bring peace to the region and what the repercussions will be.

“We can see that Netanyahu has only been encouraged by the statements that the government [that is to take office in the US] has been making in the past week or so. I think that is a concern because it’s also a security concern for us.”