The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.
© Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.Trump administration slams Turkey for weapon test
By ROBERT BURNS WASHINGTON©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
6 Comments
Login to comment
Bob Fosse
No beautiful letters?
theFu
Turkey has been deep, deep, deep, undercover to get NATO access to Russian equipment. Is this not obvious to everyone else? Turkey controls the channel between the Black Sea and the world - that's basically 1/3rd of Russian naval power. Basically, Turkey is pulling a CCP-Chinese play - if you want to sell stuff here, you must teach us to make it ourselves.
When Erdogan is gone, the NATO ties will reconnect. Never underestimate Turks. They have thousands and thousands of years of diplomatic experience ... er ... provided they aren't conquered.
Since 2016, the entire world has shifted to national interests. That pendulum is shifting back a little, but it won't be the world-first, before country, like under Obama either.
Zaphod
Why is Turkey in NATO anyway? The illegal Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus alone should disqualify them right off the bat.
Desert Tortoise
Geography. They control the Dardanelles and in so doing are able to deny the Russians access to the Mediterranean Sea from the Black Sea. For NATO, keeping the Russians and the Soviets before them out of the Med is vital to Europe's defense. That is why Russia has a naval base in Syria. With Russian subs in the Med NATO shipping has a problem. That is also I think why the west cultivates Egypt, to keep the Russians and Chinese from using the Suez during a war. Were it not for geography I think most if not all the other nations of NATO would have bid good bye to Turkey some time ago. It is probably why the US never fully embraced the Kurds despite the decades long slow motion genocide against them, for fear of losing the ability to control the Dardanelles in the event of a war with Russia. I think that is a grave mistake but I'm just one person.
Desert Tortoise
Don't kid yourself. The Russians control access to those S400 batteries. NATO and the US are not going to get an opportunity to exploit them with. The Russians have their own techs on the ground to limit access. The US does similar with certain systems. The US doesn't want its weapons turned against its allies or be seen on TV all over the world being used against legitimate protesters and such.
The reason Turkey is not being offered co-production and tech transfer for the Patriot system isn't the Executive Branch. It is Raytheon. They make Patriot, claim proprietary rights to the design and all the associated technology and won't even share it with the US Army. If one breaks, it must be returned to Raytheon for repair. The Army has several fine depots that could accomplish the repairs but Raytheon will not share the data rights for their systems. This is across the board with Raytheon and pretty much every other defense contractor. They have learned that by leveraging the courts and refusing to share data they can control the entire logistics and maintenance train for everything they make. It is a huge source of profit for them. I live this, I have callouses on my forehead from it. The big defense contractors are thus able to create a monopoly for their product and behave like monopolists.