Is Erdogan’s trust in Trump in the S-400/F-35 standoff misplaced?
Turkish government officials believe that if Trump was not hamstrung by Congress and the Pentagon, he and Erdogan would have solved this matter by now.
The debacle over Istanbul’s mayoral elections has added further urgency to Ankara’s need to resolve differences with the United States over its purchase of Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems.
Washington is threatening to withhold the delivery of state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jets to Turkey if it goes ahead with the deal. It is also threatening to impose sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.
The annulment of the March 31 municipal elections in Istanbul, which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party lost, has already hit Turkey’s crisis-ridden economy, sending the Turkish lira into a fresh nosedive against the dollar.
Any US sanctions and other punitive measures over the S-400 affair will only make matters worse, causing more economic turmoil, which Erdogan can ill afford.
