When Turkish President Recep Erdogan brokered a $2.5 billion deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy the S-400 Triumf missile system, one of Moscow’s most advanced air defense weapons, Washington warned it would be a costly mistake – and so it proved.
In July 2019, just days after Turkey received the first of four missile batteries the US removed Ankara, a financial and manufacturing partner, from the F-35 multirole combat aircraft program.
In December 2020 the outgoing President Trump took further action using the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” which allowed the US to place economic sanctions against Turkey. Although economic penalties have not since been instituted the point was made.
In January this year during a visit to Istanbul, acting deputy of Secretary of State Victoria Nuland offered to readmit Turkey into the fifth-generation fighter program, on condition that Ankara disposed of its S-400 missiles.
On the face of it that should not be a problem as the Russian missiles were only deployed for initial acceptance testing and have remained unused in a warehouse ever since. However, many see them as an important symbol of Erdogan’s close links with Putin, making their removal difficult for the Turkish president.
The former Turkish diplomat, now political analyst Aydin Selcen described the purchase of the S-400s as “a diplomatic catastrophe of historical magnitude,” and as “an unforced error, an own goal,” which he thought Erdogan would have problems “walking away from.”
NATO and other Western allies of Kyiv have called on Turkey to transfer its S-400s to Ukraine just as it is reported Greece did with its modernized Russian S-300PMU-1 air defense systems as part of an agreement to allow Athens to acquire its F-35s.
A number of commentators believe that US-Turkish ties have improved following Ankara’s, albeit delayed, ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership which was followed by Washington allowing the sale of F-16 fighters to Turkey.
kyivpost.com