https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/world/asia/turkey-erdogan-missile-trump.html
Erdogan Goes His Own Way as Turkish Distrust With U.S. Grows
By Carlotta Gall
July 16, 2019
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a rally on Monday to honor the victims of the 2016 failed coup. Mr. Erdogan has tried to recast Turkey as a more independent actor on the international stage.
ImagePresident Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a rally on Monday to honor the victims of the 2016 failed coup. Mr. Erdogan has tried to recast Turkey as a more independent actor on the international stage.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a rally on Monday to honor the victims of the 2016 failed coup. Mr. Erdogan has tried to recast Turkey as a more independent actor on the international stage.
ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has marked the anniversary of a failed coup against him every passing year — this week was the third — with a national holiday that has turned the traumatic event into a celebration of Turkish nationalism.
But this year, Mr. Erdogan had even more to cheer about, as he flaunted an extra-special symbol of national pride, the S-400 missile defense system that had just arrived from Russia.
“As long as we, as a nation, protect our homeland, our flag, the call for prayer, democracy and the state,” he declared at a ceremony at Ataturk Airport Monday, “God willing, no power’s hand will be able to reach them.”
Over his 17 years in power, Mr. Erdogan has tried to recast Turkey as a stronger, more independent actor on the international stage, one that in his view can vie toe to toe with powers like China, Russia, the European Union and the United States.
In doing so, he has not been afraid to play all sides against each other, even at the risk of alienating longtime allies as his apparent double-dealing stirs consternation in Europe and America about whose side he is actually on.
The short answer is, his own.
If there is an underlying message in the deal, it may be about Mr. Erdogan’s deep-seated suspicion that Washington was behind the attempt to overthrow him on the bloody night in 2016, when more than 200 Turks were killed, including one of Mr. Erdogan’s closest friends.
Parts of a Russian S-400 missile defense system being unloaded from a Russian plane near Ankara last week.
ImageParts of a Russian S-400 missile defense system being unloaded from a Russian plane near Ankara last week.
Parts of a Russian S-400 missile defense system being unloaded from a Russian plane near Ankara last week.CreditReuters
“Erdogan no longer trusts Western intentions on Turkey,” said Asli Aydintasbas, senior fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations. The S-400 purchase wasn’t about Russian pressure, she said.
‘‘It is about Turkish fears of another coup,’’ Ms. Aydintasbas said. ‘‘Washington has done nothing to address Turkey’s suspicions about its role on July 15.”
The Turkish government has accused the United States-based cleric Fethullah Gulen of instigating the coup through followers who had infiltrated the ranks of the armed forces, the judiciary and the police.
Washington, citing a lack of evidence, has refused Turkey’s repeated demands that Mr. Gulen be extradited. Many Turks see the United States’ reluctance to hand over Mr. Gulen as an attempt to protect an American agent.
Mr. Erdogan suggested as much in his speech on Monday.
“July 15 was a different way of trying to put the yoke of slavery on our nation,” he said. “Those who think that they can take our nation as slaves through a treacherous gang they planted inside our country, one more time learned their lesson, as it has happened for centuries.”
Even so, Mr. Erdogan does not seem ready to rip up old alliances completely, but rather to play with East-West rivalries to get the best deal for Turkey, analysts say. His nationalist posturing is often used in pursuit of driving a harder bargain.
Image
Mr. Erdogan with President Trump at the Group of 20 meeting in Japan last month. The delivery of the S-400 is likely to worsen relations.
Mr. Erdogan with President Trump at the Group of 20 meeting in Japan last month. The delivery of the S-400 is likely to worsen relations.CreditErin Schaff/The New York Times
“Washington must give up the misguided notion that our relationship can be asymmetrical and come to terms with the fact that Turkey has alternatives,” Mr. Erdogan wrote in an opinion article in The New York Times last year.
“Failure to reverse this trend of unilateralism and disrespect will require us to start looking for new friends and allies,” he added.
Even with his purchase of the new Russian missile system, Mr. Erdogan dismissed any suggestion that he was seeking to take Turkey out of the NATO alliance at a news briefing with foreign journalists last month.
But the question confronting Mr. Erdogan’s allies in the United States and Europe is whether the purchase of the Russian system is simply a step too far to maintain relations as they have been.
If the purchase does not precipitate a rupture in relations, it may reshape them.
Turkey’s purchase of the advanced S-400 system — reported by the Turkish news media to cost $2.5 billion — represents Mr. Erdogan’s most determined step yet to carve out his own vision of an independent, strong Turkey that can rebuff colonial Western powers.
[What is the S-400?]
The United States has strenuously opposed Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 system, declaring it incompatible with NATO systems, and is expected to announce sanctions against Turkey as early as this week.
The American-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The United States’ reluctance to hand over Mr. Gulen has raised tensions.
Credit
Charles Mostoller for The New York Times
The American-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The United States’ reluctance to hand over Mr. Gulen has raised tensions.
The American-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The United States’ reluctance to hand over Mr. Gulen has raised tensions.CreditCharles Mostoller for The New York Times
The Pentagon has already halted Turkey’s program to purchase American F-35 fighter jets to prevent having them deployed in the same theater as the Russian system. On Tuesday, President Trump said his administration would not sell Turkey any F-35 jets because of its purchase of the Russian system.
“It’s a very tough situation that they’re in. And it’s a very tough situation that we’ve been placed in the United States,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “With all of that being said, we’re working through it.”
Mr. Erdogan is gambling on his relationship with Mr. Trump to avoid sanctions that have been mandated by Congress. The two leaders discussed the issue at their meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting last month in Japan.
Mr. Erdogan also signaled over the weekend that he was ready to negotiate a solution.
His defense minister, Hulusi Akar, said talks continued with Washington over procurement of the American Patriot missile, and Mr. Erdogan emphasized in a speech that the S-400 would not be fully running until April of next year. The actual missiles have not arrived yet, the Turkish news media reported.
The risk in the meantime — one Mr. Erdogan is keen to highlight — is that Turkey can cozy up to Russia. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has proved a willing suitor.
Analysts and Turkish officials say the Russian leader has seemingly been more willing than the Americans to hear out Turkish concerns — even when interests diverge — and to treat Mr. Erdogan as an equal.
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Erdogan in Sochi, Russia, in February.
In almost every area where Mr. Trump and the United States have been inflexible or frosty, Mr. Putin has offered dialogue.
Whereas Mr. Trump’s Twitter rampages helped sink the Turkish lira last year — another instance in which Mr. Erdogan saw an American attempt to undermine him — Mr. Putin is talking trade.
Even in Syria, where the two countries were on opposite sides of the conflict, Mr. Putin has worked to change Turkey from an aggressive opponent to a cooperative partner.
When a Turkish jet shot down a Russian jet that veered into Turkish airspace in November 2015, the event underscored the seeming distance between Russia and Turkey.
The Russian jet was on a bombing mission in support of the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. Turkey, along with the United States, was backing the rebels who were being bombed.
But Russia’s intervention in Syria turned the war in Mr. Assad’s favor, and American support melted away. If anything, Washington began cooperating with Kurdish militias in northeastern Syria that Turkey considers a threat.
A rally in Istanbul on Monday, the third anniversary of the failed coup.
Credit
Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mr. Putin has now brought Mr. Erdogan into his efforts to wind down the war, his so-called Astana process, along with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran.
Together they have established cease-fire zones in Syria to de-escalate the violence and allowed Turkey to establish areas of control in northern Syria to stem the tide of refugees pouring into the country.
But it was Mr. Putin’s treatment of Mr. Erdogan after the failed coup that was a critical turning point, said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“The coup changed Putin’s calculus,” he said. The Russian leader called Mr. Erdogan the day after the coup and invited him to Russia. Two weeks after the coup, he hosted Mr. Erdogan at a tsarist palace in St. Petersburg. The S-400s came up in their discussion.
“Putin may have seen that the trauma was so deep,” Mr. Cagaptay said, whereas Washington waited four days before it declared sympathy over the coup, and then it was not President Obama who called but Secretary of State John F. Kerry.
“If things had been handled earlier, it would not have happened,” Ahmet Han, a professor of international relations at Altinbas University in Istanbul, said of the S-400 deal.
“Turkey’s decision makers are jubilant about the receipt” of the S-400s, he added, “but no one is really happy except the Russian lobby.”
A version of this article appears in print on July 17, 2019, Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Erdogan, Embracing Defense System, Tests U.S. Tolerance. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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