Putin exploits crisis in US-Turkish relations

Just four days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Moscow, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived on April 9 for a full day of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, leading to agreements to expand trade, tourism and energy cooperation as well as hints at deepening defense ties and discussions about next steps in Syria.

As Maxim Suchkov writes, Putin gave Erdogan the empathy the Turkish leader isn’t getting from Washington. And Erdogan welcomed the Russian bear hug. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered setbacks in municipal elections in Turkey’s largest cities on March 31, and US-Turkish relations remain, well, pretty awful.

The US-Turkey “relationship is in such a bad state that the sides can’t even agree on what was discussed during recent high-level bilateral talks,” writes Semih Idiz. “This was the case following the meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington on April 3,” which included some embarrassing public back and forth about what was discussed and agreed and what was not.

The Donald Trump administration was crystal clear, however, about Turkey’s intent to purchase the Russian S-400 air defense system. A Pentagon spokesperson said, “The S-400 is a threat to the F-35 program and the safety of our NATO allies.” The Defense Department nixed a Turkish offer to set up a bilateral working group to temper these concerns, as Jack Detsch reports. The chairs and ranking members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees wrote in the New York Times that Turkey’s choice is either the US F-35 fighter jets or the S-400; in other words, Erdogan can’t have it both ways. If the choice is the S-400, Turkey could even face sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act, they wrote.