Turkey, a NATO ally of the U.S., will follow through with a deal to purchase anti-aircraft defenses from Russia, which could pose a significant international relations challenge to the Trump administration.
“Our President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made it perfectly clear that the agreement between Turkey and Russia is final, and the issue of the S-400 purchase is closed,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy told Russian-run media outlet TASS on Friday.
If completed, the deal is doubly complicated for President Trump. Turkey’s use of such weapons would hamper military cooperation within the NATO alliance. It would also put pressure on Trump’s administration to impose sanctions on Turkey, despite its ally status, pursuant to the 2017 Russia sanctions law that attempts to restrict international cooperation with the Russian defense sector.
“[W]e’ve been advising countries around the world as to what the impact on their relationship and purchases that they might be considering with Russia, and many have reconsidered those and have decided to not proceed with those discussions,” then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in February following meetings with Turkish officials. “We want to consult with Turkey and at least ensure they understand what might be at risk in this particular transaction.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavosoglu rebuffed that warning at the time. “I have emergency need of an air defense system,” he said. “And when we talked to Russia, this was actually an agreement that we reached before the legislation in Congress was enacted.”
The agreement is part of Russia’s broader effort to strengthen ties with Turkey, even as U.S.-Turkey relations have been strained by the disagreements over how to fight the Islamic State in Syria and Erdogan’s human rights record. The Turkish Foreign Ministry’s affirmation of the pact came just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Turkey for a summit with Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
“Erdogan continues to be a dream partner for Putin, facilitating Moscow’s deeper penetration of Turkish economic and security sectors,” Aykan Erdemir, a former member of the Turkish Parliament who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner. “Both for Moscow and Tehran, Erdogan’s openness to cozy up to authoritarian regimes at the expense of Turkey’s NATO allies offers an invaluable opportunity to undermine the transatlantic alliance and its interests.”
Congressional Democrats have signaled that agreements negotiated before the passage of the Russia sanctions law should still be sanctionable, at least in cases where the deal was not “finalized” before the law took effect. “Under any circumstance, a S-400 sale would be considered a ‘significant transaction’ and we expect that any sale would result in designations,” New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a March letter to Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan.
NATO officials have also lobbied against the arms deal. “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.”
Putin disclaims any strategic goals in selling Turkey the weapons. “The issue about joint production or technologies transfer is not a matter of trust or any political cooperation for us,” Putin said Tuesday. “It is a purely commercial matter that is agreed between economic entities.”
