Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s administration might purchase Russian fighter jets instead of American planes, a top Turkish official for arms procurement said Wednesday.
“I wouldn’t name specific aircraft models, but I can say that negotiations with other partners on these technical issues are underway,” said Ismail Demir, the head of the Undersecreteriat for Defense Industries.
That statement follows a report last month in Turkish media that Erdogan might look to buy Russian Su-57 fighters, instead of the Lockheed Martin F-35. That would be a significant escalation of military cooperation between a member of NATO and Russia, as Erdogan is also in the process of purchasing S-400s, a Russian-made anti-aircraft system, despite the potential for undermining NATO cooperation and violating U.S. sanctions on Russia.
“Now our negotiations with Russia are not limited only to the S-400 issue and dialogue on other technical themes is underway,” Demir told a Turkish TV station, in remarks picked up by TASS, a Kremlin-backed media outlet.
The chatter about purchasing Russian fighters could be designed as a counter to U.S. efforts to dissuade Erdogan from proceeding with the purchase of the S-400s. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. lawmakers have suggested that the Russia deal might jeopardize Turkey’s access to the F-35s, one of the most advanced fighter jets in the U.S. military and broader NATO partnership.
“We need [Turkish] behavior to reflect the objectives of NATO, and that’s what we’re diligently working to do: to get them to rejoin NATO, in a way, with their actions, consistent with what we’re trying to achieve in NATO. And not take actions that undermine its efforts,” Pompeo said during a recent House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
Turkey has plans to buy 100 F-35s and, as a developmental partner in the program, would also be a supplier for the global fleet.
Erdogan defends the purchase of the S-400s by complaining that the U.S. and other European allies won’t provide him with Patriot missiles. The U.S. military pulled two Patriot batteries from Turkey in 2015 because “the batteries and their troops are among the most highly demanded in the Army,” as the New York Times put it, and they were needed elsewhere. Erdogan’s authoritarian turn, and the harsh rhetoric that accompanied it, has also diminished the Western appetite for arms deals with Turkey.
“Are we going to depend on the U.S. again? When we have been demanding from them for years, the answer that has been given to us is: The [U.S.] Congress is not allowing. We are tired of this,” Erdogan said Monday. “Russia has responded to our offer with a pretty alluring offer. They said they would even get into a joint production. And with respect to loans, they have offered us pretty good loan terms. Right now, we are running this process as this.”
Congress sanctioned the company that makes S-400s in 2017, as part of a broader punishment of Russian cyberattacks against the Democratic Party during the 2016 campaigns and aggression in Ukraine and Syria. So, Erdogan’s deal puts Turkey at risk of U.S. sanctions under federal law.
“The statement … that Ankara risks falling under sanctions if it purchases S-400 systems from Russia, is exactly an example of a blackmailing attempt in the hope that it will be possible to ensure unfair competition for American companies,” Russian Foreign Ministry Sergey Lavrov said in April.
But there’s also a strategic component to the issue as well. “We really, really believe that it’s good for each country’s defense and greatest defense effectiveness if systems are interoperable, if they can operate with NATO systems,” NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller said in March. “And the S-400 is not interoperable with NATO systems.”
