Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is considering major acquisitions of defense and nuclear technology from Russia, raising the specter of an unprecedented divorce within the NATO alliance.
“The extent of the bilateral cooperation he is referring to would amount to a strategic cooperation between — not only between two countries, but almost like between two allies,” former Turkish opposition lawmaker Aykan Erdemir, a senior fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner.
Erdogan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for a meeting billed as a dialogue about the Syria crisis following violations of a ceasefire agreement the two powers had agreed to maintain. Yet Erdogan, whose government was expelled from the U.S. F-35 stealth fighter program after alarming other NATO allies with his purchase of Russia’s most advanced anti-aircraft missile defense system, emerged from the dialogue with a stated interest in expanding the partnership to Turkey’s air force and navy.
“We had the opportunity to discuss comprehensively what steps to take in the production of plane engines, what steps to take regarding fighter jets,” Erdogan told reporters on his plane, according to Turkish media. “Another issue is that we can take many steps together in shipbuilding. We will again take joint steps with Russia, including submarines.”
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Those projects would put Erdogan on another collision course with a U.S. law designed to drive business away from Russia’s defense industry, passed in response to Russia’s 2016 election interference, by imposing sanctions on countries that make a “significant transaction” with Russian defense companies. Former President Donald Trump’s administration imposed these sanctions in December, but Erdogan has maintained a defiant public stance.
“I’m going to possibly acquire defense systems from another country, and nobody can get involved in this,” Erdogan said in a televised CBS interview. “In the future, nobody will be able to interfere in terms of what kind of defense systems we acquire, from which country, at what level. Nobody can interfere with that.”
Erdogan and Putin have cultivated a complicated yet transactional relationship in recent years, enabled by U.S. and Turkish disputes over how to respond to the Islamic State’s emergence during the Syrian civil war. Syrian Kurdish militias are aligned with the United States, providing the key ground forces in the fight to dismantle the terror state, but Erdogan fumed at this partnership because he identifies the Syrian Kurds with a Kurdish militant group that has fought the Turkish government for decades.
“The terrorist organizations in and around Turkey are receiving logistical support from the United States at a very severe extent,” he said last week.
The alliance has been strained further by Erdogan’s repression of dissidents and frequent arrests of journalists, although he has justified the crackdown as a necessary counterterrorism measure following an apparent coup attempt he blamed on the U.S. Erdogan left U.S. lawmakers outraged in 2017 when he watched as his presidential security detail beat protesters outside the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C.
“He would like easier access to Western weapons systems, no questions asked. And if he wants to, you know, co-locate Russian weapons systems alongside NATO weapons systems, he wants the ability to do that,” Erdemir said of the Turkish president. “And he also doesn’t want any human rights restrictions on the sale of weapons.”
Russian officials do not appear to have such misgivings about human rights, but the Putin-Erdogan relationship has its own difficulties, such as Turkey’s opposition to the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. A major natural gas contract between Turkey and Russia is set to expire in December, and Turkish officials have signaled that they might “find an alternative supply” if the Russians do not offer lower prices than they did on the previous 25-year deal. Recently, Turkish officials have begun discussions with U.S. firms about how to develop natural gas fields in the Black Sea.
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That cocktail of incentives for partnership with the U.S. and Russia could put a brake on Erdogan’s willingness for a full-scale alignment with Putin.
“A Turkey without NATO should be easy prey for the Kremlin,” Erdemir said. “Erdogan has just presented a large menu in terms of Turkish-Russian military cooperation. And he might only be able to realize one of these, among a long list of other options, and that will simply be the next step in Turkey’s drift away from NATO and growing dependence on Russia.”
