The US, being the military and political leader of the NATO bloc, remains the main driving force in the sphere of high military technologies of the alliance countries. Accordingly, the interoperability strategy of allied armies is determined by the Pentagon in coordination with the President’s administration, the CIA, and the US Department of State.
It is clear that Washington also controls the modernization programs of the armed forces of its allies, taking into account a complex of issues (for example, intra-bloc contradictions between Turkey and Greece, or the interests of conditional micro-clubs such as the elite Anglo-Saxon, subordinate Western European, dependent Central and Southern European). The US has no plans at all to spread its high military technology and modern developments to all NATO countries overnight. This process depends on many factors (in particular, geostrategic, geopolitical, geographical, financial and economic, etc.).
Turkey, due to its geographical importance and geostrategic significance, obtained a ticket to NATO in 1952 largely because of the anti-Soviet policy of the Anglo-Saxons, which generally does not lose its relevance to this day against the Russian Federation. Therefore, the state of armament and combat readiness of the Turkish Army and Navy is on the priority list of the US and NATO.
However, after 1991 (i.e. after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact bloc and the USSR, which meant a significant reduction in the nuclear threat from the North) and especially in 2003 (i.e. after Operation Desert Storm in Iraq and the emergence of an operational maneuver for US troops in the Middle East), Turkey’s role on NATO’s southeastern flank changed. In other words, while during the Cold War and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Turkey remained the main anchor of the North Atlantic Alliance in the south-east, the geopolitical transformations that took place at the turn of the 21st century led not only to the reduction of the potential military threat from Russia, but also to the expansion of NATO to the East. In fact, all the Black Sea countries have become either new members (Bulgaria, Romania) or candidate members (Ukraine, Georgia) of NATO.
Therefore, for the US, interest in Turkey has diminished by an order of magnitude, if not permanently. The latter has affected the modernization and rearmament of the Turkish Army (especially in the field of air defense and air force). Moreover, given the traditional Turkish-Greek contradictions, the unresolved Cyprus issue and the aggressive ambitions of the new Turkish leader Recep Erdoğan to claim the richest gas deposits discovered in the Greek sector of the Eastern Mediterranean (not to mention the doctrine of neo-Ottomanism with its revanchist ideas of recreating the Turkish empire), the United States began to build a differentiated military policy in relations with Greece and Turkey.
Thus, in order to stop possible recurrences of the 1974 Turkish naval operation Atilla to occupy the northern part of the island of Cyprus and to exclude a Turkish-Greek military conflict, the US began to strengthen the combat power of the Greek Air Force by selling modernized F-16 fighter jets from 2022 and included Greece in the list of supplies of the F-35 multirole fifth-generation fighter jet, thus creating a military and technical advantage in favor of Athens, provided that Turkey is excluded from the production program of the same F-35s in 2019. Before that, the Americans simply delayed the supply of the Patriot air defense system to the Turks, which naturally irritated Ankara and forced them to look for alternative solutions to the air defense issue.
In view of the growing trends in energy and trade and economic cooperation between Turkey and Russia, taking into account the importance of the Russian factor in the plans to implement the doctrine of pan-Turanism in the south-east of the post-Soviet space, and appreciating the quality of Russian arms on the world markets, President R. Erdoğan first warned his US allies and then concluded the relevant contracts with Russia for the purchase of S-300 Favorit and S-400 Triumf air defense systems.
The said deal led to a scandal within NATO, strained US-Turkish relations, disconnected Turkey from the F-35 fifth-generation fighter production program and suspended a deal to sell the Turks 40 modernized F-16 Block 70 fighter jets with avionics parts to upgrade Turkey’s fleet of 79 aging Turkish F-16s.
Such US sanctions against Turkey, on the one hand, repeated the experience of similar actions of the Nixon administration after the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus in 1974, and, on the other hand, once again provoked disagreements between Ankara and Washington and unwittingly contributed to the intensification of Turkish-Russian multi-vector cooperation. Nevertheless, Turkey has been faced with finding new options to modernize its combat air fleet, either by acquiring another foreign 4th or 5th generation fighter jet (e.g. the European Eurofighter Typhoon, the Chinese J-20 Black Eagle, the Russian Su-35 or Su-57) or by setting up its own development and production of a domestic 5th generation KAAN fighter.
However, after Turkey ratified Sweden’s admission to NATO on January 23-25 this year, where one of the conditions of the deal was the restart of US-Turkish relations (including military supplies of F-16s), the Joseph Biden administration and the US Congress approved the sale of 40 modernized F-16 Block 70 fighters with spare parts for a total of 23 billion dollars. The agenda for the restart of US-Turkey relations has once again brought the issue of the Turks’ admission to the F-35 fifth-generation fighter jet production program to the forefront.
In particular, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, after President Recep Erdoğan signed a decree ratifying Sweden’s NATO membership in late January, visited Ankara and held substantive talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. In her speech on CNN Türk, V. Nuland said that following the approval of the deal on F-16 supplies, the US could positively consider allowing Turkey to join the F-35s production program, taking into account the interoperability strategy of the alliance members. However, according to Nuland, Russia’s S-300 and S-400 air defense systems remain a problem here. Washington offers Ankara to give up the use of Russian air defense systems as the main condition for the resolution of the F-35s issue. As an annex to the multi-role fighter production program, Nuland expressed the US readiness to solve the issue of Turkish air defense by supplying US Patriot systems.
What is there to say? As is well known, Ms V. Nuland belongs to the conventional group of US hawks and is often struck by the absurdity of her initiatives and proposals. How do the Americans see the very process of the Turks’ rejection of the acquired Russian air defense systems? Should they send these air defense systems, worth several billion dollars, to an arms depot or to a historical museum of armaments of the Ottoman army, or sell them to brotherly Azerbaijan, which after the successful second Karabakh war has awakened its appetite for annexation of new Armenian territories (for example, Zangezur, Lake Sevan and Yerevan itself)? Or does the US President’s administration, experiencing a budget deficit and the negative attitude of the Republican Party regarding the continuation of the irresponsible arming of the Kiev regime against Russia, suggest that Turkey transfer Russian weapons to the AFU? So why didn’t the United States decide to support its ally on air security issues and hand over the very Patriot systems to the Turks to ensure an interoperability program for NATO members before 2019?
Probably until December 2023, Washington was extremely dissatisfied with Ankara’s stance towards Athens. After Erdoğan’s famous visit to Greece and the restart of Turkish-Greek relations, the US apparently had no need to block allied Turkey.
However, the reasoning of some Turkish sources presented in the pages of the pro-government newspaper Yeni Şafak seem no less unconvincing and even absurd in this regard. In particular, the Turkish publication claims that Ankara and Washington’s disagreement on the F-35s issue is determined not only by the Russian armament, but also by a number of other issues related to the Eastern Mediterranean. In particular, US military supplies to Greece, the situation in the Middle East – US support for Israel in the conflict with Hamas, and the Syrian Kurds. Therefore, the Turks are hoping for a denouement on all the named issues, not only on the issue of Russian S-400s.
It turns out that Turkey is generally not against accepting the US ultimatum on the non-use of Russian air defense systems, but links the solution of this issue in a complex with other above-mentioned topics: parity of F-16s and F-35s supplies to Turkey along with Greece, support for Turkish initiatives on Palestinian independence within the 1967 borders with granting Ankara the status of security guarantor (international mandate for the Palestinian state), as well as satisfying Turkish ambitions in northern Syria against the Kurds.
Is Turkey asking a little too much from the US for the right to bolster its air security with US-built next-generation fighter jets? The absurdity of the Turkish position is that it seems that it is not the US that is the leader of NATO, the manufacturer and seller of multi-role fighters, but, on the contrary, Turkey. If the Turks are so brave, and even President Erdoğan at the beginning of the Palestinian-Israeli military conflict in late October threatened a night raid of the heirs of the Sultan’s army over the ocean, why after 20 months of political bargaining Ankara, nevertheless, ratified the “Swedish case” in NATO in the hope of a military deal of modernized F-16 fighters, which are a class below the F-35s?
How can one understand such an “independent” Turkey, which under severe pressure from the US Department of the Treasury at the beginning of the new year went to freeze bank payments to Russian exports, and now refuses to cooperate with Russian companies at all? Apparently, the monthly anti-record devaluation of the Turkish lira against the US dollar, the Central Bank’s credit settings soaring to 45%, and nearly 70% inflation, are still forcing Turkey to consider the US dictate.
It is no coincidence that the Russian President’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, referring to the crisis in banking relations with Turkey, noted that Moscow understands the difficulties faced by Turkish partners due to the severe pressure of the United States. However, the Russians’ understanding does not necessarily mean reconciliation with this situation.
In this regard, Russian political observer Andrey Perla is rather right, who, commenting on Ankara’s agreement to ratify Sweden’s application to NATO in an interview with Tsargrad, noted that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Turkey to wear two hats, it will have to choose between the US and Russia. In particular, the expert said: “It is impossible to be the leader of the Muslim world and yet be in NATO. It is impossible to be in NATO and yet oppress Kurdistan. It is impossible to cooperate with Russia and yet be an enemy of Syria. And so on… It will end sooner or later, but probably not tomorrow.”
In my opinion, Erdoğan masterfully played up the issue of NATO expansion in the northwestern part of Europe in 2022-2024. The leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party realized the difficulty of winning the 2023 presidential election under US pressure. That is why Erdoğan made the fate of ratification of Finland’s and Sweden’s membership in the North Atlantic Alliance the subject of closed political bargaining with Washington, where the first lot (Finland’s admission) meant an advance of 50% before the elections, and the second lot (Sweden’s admission) a pledge for the next 50% after the elections and a restart of Turkish-US relations.
Erdoğan is a far-sighted politician and realizes that there is currently no pressing need for F-35 fighter jets for Turkey if Ankara has offered Athens a peace agenda. Turkey is not going to get involved in a military conflict on the side of Hamas against Israel either, realizing the consequences for them of US, UK and Israeli anger. Erdoğan is aiming eastwards to Turan, and under the guise of ethnic friendship and economic pragmatism is conducting multi-vector cooperation with Russia and China, with the help of which he controls Iran’s radicalism in relation to, for example, the same Azerbaijan. And for all this, it is enough for Turkey at this stage to have modernized F-16 Block 70 fighter jets.
It cannot be said that there is a high degree of domestic political consolidation on foreign policy issues in Turkey, for the same past presidential elections in 2023 showed that Turkish society is split roughly 50×50. And Erdoğan’s political longevity is determined by the peculiarities of his character and political flair, his ability and skill to negotiate with different centers due to his mastery of the geopolitical conjuncture.
Alexander SVARANTS – Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”