Defying U.S., Turkey gets first shipment of Russian missile system
Defying strenuous U.S. objections and the threat of sanctions, Turkey began receiving the first shipment of a sophisticated Russian surface-to-air missile system Friday, a step certain to test the country’s uneasy place in the NATO alliance.
The system, called the S-400, includes advanced radar to detect aircraft and other targets, and the United States has been unyielding in its opposition to Turkey’s acquisition of the equipment, which is deeply troubling to Washington on several levels.
It puts Russian technology inside the territory of a key NATO ally — one from which strikes into Syria have been staged. The Russian engineers who will be required to set up the system, U.S. officials fear, will have an opportunity to learn much about the U.S.-made fighter jets that are also part of Turkey’s arsenal.
That is one reason the Trump administration has already moved to block the delivery of the F-35 stealth fighter jet, one of the United States’ most advanced aircraft, to Turkey, and has suspended the training of its pilots, who were learning how to fly it. (Whether NATO, in turn, might glean some Russian secrets from Turkey’s acquisition of the S-400 is unclear.)
To the minds of Pentagon strategists, the S-400 deal is part of President Vladimir Putin’s plan to divide NATO. U.S. officials are clearly uneasy when asked about the future of the alliance or even how Turkey could remain an active member of NATO while using Russian-made air defenses.
“The political ramifications of this are very serious because the delivery will confirm to many the idea that Turkey is drifting off into a non-Western alternative,” said Ian Lesser, director of the German Marshall Fund in Brussels. “This will create a lot of anxiety and bad feelings inside NATO — it will clearly further poison sentiment for Turkey inside the alliance.”
Strategically positioned at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and sharing a border on the Black Sea with Russia, Turkey has long been both a vital peg in NATO and one of its more prickly members.
With one foot in the conflicts of the Middle East and a toehold in Europe, its interests have not always easily aligned with an alliance originally forged as a Western European defense against the Soviets. Instead, under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has increasingly played both sides in the East-West struggle.
NATO has stationed the American-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system on Turkish soil since the outbreak of the civil war in
Syria, but Erdogan has insisted his country needs its own long-range system.
Turkey tried for years to buy its own Patriot system, but talks with Washington never produced a deal — a result that President Donald Trump, at the Group of 20 meeting last month, said was the fault of the Obama administration.
“It’s a mess,” Trump said. “And honestly, it’s not really Erdogan’s fault.”
Even as he announced the arrival of three planes bearing the first parts of the Russian system, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Turkey still hoped to buy its U.S. counterpart. “We are looking for Patriot procurement and our institutions are working intensively in that regard,” he said in remarks shown on the state-owned TRT channel.
Turkey does need to fill a gap in its defenses, but in purchasing the S-400, “the political-military outcomes could turn into a weakness for Turkey’s security,” said Ahmet Han, professor of international relations at Altinbas University in Istanbul. “The delivery has already caused a creeping vulnerability because it has damaged Turkey’s relations with NATO.”
The presence of the Russian system — which includes truck-mounted radars, command posts, and missiles and launchers — would introduce an extra consideration into every NATO operation, he said, and that added strain
“is the exact thing that Russia is after.”
Turkey’s turn to Russia for its own system is a success for Putin, who has sought to draw Turkey closer since a dramatic falling-out over the Syrian war, in which the Kremlin has backed the Assad government, while Turkey has supported a rebel faction.
The dispute could strain the relationship between the U.S. and Turkish militaries, which goes back decades. The Incirlik air base is a critical post for U.S. forces in the region, and while U.S. officials never discuss it in public, the base is also the storage site for scores of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons, a leftover of the Cold War.