A major arms purchase from Russia by Turkey might be a signal of an increasingly important tectonic shift in political alignments among Iran, Russia and Turkey, with significance for U.S. relations with them, and in the world.
A major arms purchase from Russia by Turkey might be a signal of an increasingly important tectonic shift in political alignments among Iran, Russia and Turkey, with significance for U.S. relations with them, and in the world.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a longtime member of NATO, announced Tuesday the down payment to Russia on the purchase of an S-400 surface-to-air missile system. It was not Turkey’s first shot at buying an outside-of-NATO — and thus not interoperable — weapons system. Nor was Turkey the first NATO member to buy weapons from Russia. But it could well be a strong signal of the level of discontent in Erdogan’s Turkey with the country’s previous pro-Western orientation.
It also could be an indication of growing cooperation, moving toward an alliance, among three strong countries of the region, Iran, Russia and Turkey. Such a development would be clear evidence of the decline of U.S. influence in the region, a result of missed opportunities, and what could become increasingly troublesome coordination among three relatively strong countries.
On another level, the Russian sale to the Turks was also a rich missed sale on the part of the American defense industry, a matter no doubt of some concern to the Trump administration. It clearly attaches importance to such matters, an example being the announcement of big arms sales to Saudi Arabia during Trump’s visit there.
It used to be, during the Cold War, that Turkey’s and Iran’s relationships with the United States served as their bulwark against engulfment by the neighboring, ambitious Soviet Union. Now, U.S. relations with all three have pretty much gone wrong.
Turkey is cross because the United States has armed and employed the Kurds, a problem for Turkey at home, to fight the Islamic State in Turkish neighbor Syria. Turkey’s long-standing attempt to join the European Union has now mostly collapsed, a result of the Erdogan government’s human rights record at home. Turkey is particularly cross at the United States for continuing to harbor, in Pennsylvania, Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric whom Erdogan accuses of having led a failed coup d’etat against him last year.
U.S. relations with Iran, including as a market for U.S. trade and investment, have not evolved as they might have after the agreement in 2015 between Iran and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — and Germany. Iran agreed to limit development of a nuclear capacity. The group, including the United States, agreed to curtail economic and financial sanctions against Iran. Iran has respected the accord; the United States has not and, thus, has left the Iranian market and improved relations with Iran to the other signatories, a missed commercial and political opportunity.
U.S.-Russia relations, which might have improved after the November U.S. elections, remain totally confounded by the three U.S. investigations into Russian intervention in the American elections, and what those inquiries might unearth about Russian involvement with the Trump campaign.
If the absence of fruitful U.S. relations with Iran, Russia and Turkey lead to closer cooperation among them, as the Turkish arms purchase might indicate, the United States will face in that region an even greater problem than it does now with the various wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette