The decision by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to choose Russia’s S-400 air defense system over America’s best weapons, including the vaunted Patriot missile and the F-35, the world’s premier fighter jet, may have put the long troubled U.S.-Turkish alliance in a tailspin.
At his Senate confirmation hearing to be President Trump’s next defense secretary, Mark Esper gave the standard response to what many in Congress see as Erdoğan’s perfidy.
“They’ve been a longstanding and very capable NATO ally,” Esper testified, “but their decision on the S-400 is the wrong one and it’s disappointing.”
President Trump, who prides himself on his ability to charm recalcitrant world leaders, is frustrated, boxed in by what he sees as another problem he inherited from President Barack Obama.
In Trump’s view, Erdoğan was “forced” to buy Russian missiles because, under Obama, the U.S. refused to come to terms on a deal to provide Turkey with America’s Patriot system.
The problem for the Obama administration, and then subsequently the Trump administration, is that Erdoğan wanted more than just the missiles. He also wanted classified technology so that Turkey could produce its own air defenses in the future.
That was a dealbreaker for the U.S., but apparently not for Russia, which has entered in a co-production agreement with Ankara.
Trump reluctantly agreed that under the circumstances the U.S. cannot sell F-35s to Turkey, because operating the American stealth jet alongside a Russian system, would comprise its super-secret flight profile.
But Trump admitted, “It’s not really fair” — to Turkey, that is.
Congress is now pushing for more economic sanctions mandated under the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA. That could further cripple Turkey’s already ailing economy and drive a deeper wedge between Washington and Ankara, while pushing Erdoğan even closer to Moscow.
U.S. and Turkish relations have been on the skids for years, but took a precipitous drop after the failed 2016 coup, which Erdoğan believes was instigated by U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom the U.S. refuses to extradite.
Then, in 2017, the U.S. sent arms to Kurdish factions in northern Syria to fight ISIS, including members of the YPG militia, which Turkey considers a terrorist group.
As the relationship continues to crumble, analysts worry the next brick to fall may be unrestricted access to the Incirlik Air Base, strategically located in southern Turkey, one of five locations where the U.S. has forward-deployed nuclear bombs.
As a matter of policy, the United States does not confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons at specific locations, but the secret’s been out for years and was spilled again this week when a draft document written by a Canadian member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly listed the bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.
It may be time to rethink Turkey, especially after the 2016 coup, during which access to the base was cut off for a week by forces loyal to Erdoğan who surrounded the base and arrested some alleged coup-plotters.
“Erdoğan is an ally in name only who has now entered into a military arms relationship with Russia,” says Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a Washington think tank focused on nuclear weapons policy.
The Federation of American Scientists estimates that the U.S. has about 50 B61 nuclear gravity bombs stashed at Incirlik, each with a maximum yield of 170 kilotons, or 10 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
“What part of ‘blinking red’ are we not seeing?” argues Cirincione. “It is difficult to imagine a dumber strategy than keeping an estimated 50 U.S. hydrogen bombs in a Turkish airbase 100 miles from the Syrian border.”
The B61 bomb is designed to be dropped from an F-15 as well as the stealthy F-35, the same F-35 that Turkey is now banned from having, which makes having a cache of gravity bombs at Incirlik even more problematic.
If the U.S. doesn’t want the F-35 flying routinely flying near Russian radars, will it want to base any of its high-tech F-35 fighters at Incirlik?
“There is growing anxiety in Washington about the future of Incirlik,” says Aykan Erdemir, a Turkey specialist at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “For the time being, there doesn’t seem to be an immediate concern specifically about the nuclear weapons, but there are ongoing debates among Washington’s policy circles about alternative basing options to Incirlik.”
After Turkey cut off access to the base in 2016, Germany moved its planes to Jordan. The U.S. could follow suit, says Erdemir.
“This could lead to a gradual relocation of U.S. assets to other bases in the region, but it is more likely for this process to involve conventional military hardware before nuclear weapons,” he said.
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
