While the US was distracted by Trump’s racist tweets over the weekend, Turkey began accepting delivery of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile system components, according to several news reports including one by Benjamin Mueller and Thomas Gibbons-Neff in the New York Times. This formalizes a strategic shift by Turkey toward Russia and away from US and the NATO alliance. This shift is notable because Russia and Turkey have been natural geopolitical opponents since the 16th century with only a few short periods of warm relations, and the two countries are backing opposite sides in the Syrian Civil War.
Ali Demirdas’s opinion piece yesterday in the National Interest has an interesting rundown about why Turkey is switching sides. Briefly:
- Trump’s threats against Turkey if they attack the Kurds in Syria told the Turks that he prioritizes them below the Kurds.
- There is oil and natural gas around the disputed island of Cyprus, the Greek Cypriot government has granted drilling rights to ExxonMobil, and the US Sixth Fleet increased its presence in the area last year. Turkey opposes these oil and gas claims, on behalf of Northern Cyprus.
- Pro-government news sources in Turkey are publishing rumors that the Sixth Fleet is about to attack Turkey and that the US is arming Kurds with antitank missiles useful against Turkish armor.
- The failed 2016 Turkish military coup against President Erdoğan employed American-designed F-16 warplanes that air defenses around the Turkish capital were ineffective against. Perhaps Erdoğan wants a defense against the next coup.
As Demirdas notes, “Vladimir Putin has been proven a much more reliable ally for Erdoğan” than Trump has, and this may help to explain why Erdoğan trusts Putin more than he trusts Trump.
In a story published yesterday in the Turkish online news site Ahval, Erdoğan said that the S-400 deal is the “most important agreement” in modern Turkish history, and that Turkey now sees its greatest national-security threats from the West. This follows an Ahval report Friday that Turkey intends to install S-400 batteries in the Turkish border town of Suruç, presumably to deter possible airstrikes by US or NATO forces defending the Kurds in Syria.
A key tell for the bleakness of the recent Turkish news, is that Trump is blaming it all on Obama. But now the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) requires the Trump administration to apply at least five sanctions out of a dozen listed by the act; these range from limiting export licenses to cutting the Turkish government off from the US financial system. On Thursday Lara Seligman wrote in Foreign Policy that a US administration official said “Erdoğan believes he can talk Trump out of anything.” And quite possibly, with Putin’s help, Erdoğan will do exactly that.