Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not meet with US President Joe Biden at the NATO summit in Brussels, despite the rise of Ankara “shares” amid the crisis in Ukraine.
Biden’s full schedule was cited as the main reason. However, Biden had bilateral talks with French President Emmanuel Macron. Turkish officials and the US Embassy in Ankara have pushed hard for a meeting, even a discussion on the sidelines of the summit, according to diplomatic sources who did not say anything deliberate.
The real reason is Turkey’s refusal to get rid of Russian S-400 missiles, which the United States says threaten NATO security. Turkey acquired the system despite continued US pressure to scrap the deal. A series of sanctions by Congress and its expulsion from the joint F-35 fighter program have not affected Ankara.
The crisis in Ukraine was seen as a possible opportunity, with US officials backing the idea of ​​Turkey transporting S-400s to Ukraine. Turkey remains adamant it will keep the S-400s, a message made clear in an article written by Erdogan’s communications director Fahrettin Altun in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. Altun called the transfer of the S-400s to Ukraine an “unrealistic idea” in exchange for easing sanctions.
On the contrary, he argued that the burden lay with the West and “especially” the United States to normalize ties with Ankara “unconditionally”.
“The crisis in Ukraine has shown that the geopolitical assessments of those who underestimated Turkey’s strategic importance, claimed that NATO was ‘brain dead’ and believed that national borders were no longer the subject of discussion were wrong,” Altun said.
Turkey is in talks with Washington to modernize its fleet of F-16 fighter jets. Turkey is also seeking compensation for the $ 1.4 billion it paid for more than 100 F-35s it ordered before production began. However, there is strong opposition from Congress to easing military sanctions in Ankara, with Senators Bob Menendez and Jim Rees leading the anti-Turkish bloc.
Ankara continues to raise the issue of sanctions in NATO forums and is pushing individual NATO members to pressure Washington to remove them, according to diplomatic sources with Al-Monitor. The issue arose during Erdogan’s meeting with Macron yesterday. The French leader and Erdogan have disagreed over Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean and West Africa, where there is growing rivalry between France and Turkey. However, today’s meeting went very well, the sources noted.
Erdogan had separate meetings with the Italian Prime Minister and the Prime Minister of Estonia.
Speaking at the end of the NATO summit, Erdogan said Turkey’s goal was to bring Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky closer.
Western governments have not pressed Ankara to push harder on Russia, largely because of fears that Moscow would retaliate by launching a full-scale offensive in the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwestern Syria. Such a move would spark a further massive influx of Syrian refugees into Turkey and possibly Europe.
Petros Kranias
Source: Capital
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