Turkey says Macron won’t break its Russia alliance

ANKARA: Turkey on Monday said French President Emmanuel Macron will not be able to break its partnership with Russia, after he argued the weekend’s air strikes against the Syrian regime had driven a wedge between Ankara and Moscow.

“We can think differently but they (our relations with Russia) are not so weak that the French president can break them,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a press conference with Nato Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg. “We have strong relations with Russia,” Cavusoglu added. “But our relations with Russia are not an alternative to Nato relations or our allies.”

There have been growing signs of Western discomfort over the alliance of Turkey — a key Nato member since 1952 — with Iran and Russia over Syria. In an interview with French television, Macron suggested that the air strikes against Syria targets over the weekend had succeeded in engineering a split in the Russia-turkey alliance.

“With these strikes and this intervention, we separated the Russians and the Turks on this issue... the Turks condemned the chemical strike and supported the operation that we conducted,” the French president told BFM TV in an interview.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday had welcomed the strikes, which he described as “appropriate” and strongly condemned the alleged chemical attack.

But Cavusoglu said Macron was mistaken in his assessment and said that Ankara “expected statements befitting of a president” and should express himself “more seriously”.