The Turkish missile crisis: is Erdogan abandoning the West?
President Erdogan’s decision to equip Turkey’s military with the Russian S-400 missile system is puzzling, said Boris Kálnoky in Die Welt (Hamburg). The country has been a member of Nato since 1952, and was a bulwark against the Soviet threat. Yet now it’s buying a defence system from the alliance’s main enemy, one designed to shoot down Nato planes. It’s a baffling decision. After all, Turkey already has military superiority over its old enemy Greece; Kurdish terrorists have no air force, Syria’s poses no threat; and any danger from Iran is in the “distant future”. What’s more obvious is the damage the deal will cause. It has scuppered Turkey’s plans to buy US-built F-35s, the new generation of stealth fighters, as they’d then be exposed to Russian scrutiny, which the Pentagon won’t allow. Worse, the US could punish Turkey with sanctions.
Turkey insists that it can buy weapons from wherever it wants, said Simon A. Waldman in Haaretz (Tel Aviv). So its purchase of the S-400 system (estimate: $2.5bn) could just be a way of asserting independence from the West. Or else it could be a sign that Turkey is finally breaking with the US, which it blames for arming Syrian Kurds (allies of separatist Kurds in Turkey) and for refusing to hand over Fethullah Gülen, the preacher accused of organising the failed 2016 coup, who now lives in Pennsylvania. Another “conspiratorial” theory is that the intended target of the S-400 is Turkey’s own US-built F-16 fighters, some of which were used by coup plotters to bomb the National Assembly. Could Erdogan really be buying non-Nato hardware to defend against future putschists?
It’s an “unprecedented” realignment, but siding with Moscow has a certain logic, said Le Monde (Paris). Russia’s “new tsar” and Turkey’s “new sultan” have in common their authoritarianism and a desire to return to former glories. The two countries were antagonists in the Syrian conflict, but when Erdogan’s hopes of regime change in Damascus faded, he was quick to mend fences. Vladimir Putin was the first to wish him “a quick return to stability” after the failed coup. Now Erdogan is helping him in his goal of dividing the Nato alliance. If the US were to impose sanctions, it would have a “calamitous” effect on Turkey’s struggling economy, said Ilhan Tanir in Ahval News (London). Erdogan believes that President Trump won’t go that far – but it could be that he just doesn’t care: that in fact he’s trying to maintain a constant state of emergency. The opposition is gaining ground and cracks are appearing in his own party. With little hope to offer, he’s telling Turks to support him, “or the country burns”. It’s “the playbook of authoritarians throughout history”.