Is coronavirus good for health of Turkish-US relations?
The coronavirus could offer Recep Tayyip Erdogan an opportunity to defer a fresh crisis with Washington over the Russian S-400 air defense systems, which he had pledged to activate in April but whose cost has now grown on multiple fronts.
Were it not for the coronavirus pandemic, a top issue on Turkey’s agenda in April would have been the planned activation of the S-400 air defense systems that NATO member Turkey purchased from Russia.
Soon after delivery of the systems began in July 2019, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan set April 2020 as the time that the S-400s would become operational. He confirmed that timetable as recently as March 5 after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in which the two leaders sealed a cease-fire deal in Idlib. “The S-400s are now our property. All parts have arrived, and [the systems] will become operational in April,” he told journalists accompanying him on the flight back home.
