On Friday, the US strongly condemned Turkey’s testing of
S-400, Russian mobile surface-to-air missile system. Ankara’s testing got
exposed by a video posted by Turkish Minute, an opposition news outlet. The video,
which was also shared by A Haber, pro-Turkish the regime news organization, showed a trail of smoke apparently followed by
a missile shot from Sinop on the Black Sea coast during its military exercise.
According to the Reuters report, the US Defence analyst
Turan Oguz said that based on the initial assessment of the color, intensity,
angle and route of the smoke in the video it could be taken as an S-400 missile.
He added that the angle of the device showed that the target “must not be too
high”.
Both the departments of US Defense and State condemned the
apparent missile test, which Turkish authorities have neither confirmed nor
denied. “The United States has expressed to the Government of Turkey, at the
most senior levels, that the acquisition of Russian military systems
such as the S-400 is unacceptable,” said US State Department
spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus. “The United States has been clear on our
expectation that the S-400 system should not be operationalized,”
she added.
On Friday, Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman
reiterated in an emailed statement, “We object to Turkey’s purchase of the system
and are deeply concerned with reports that Turkey is bringing it into
operation. It should not be activated. Doing so risks serious consequences
for our security relationship.”
S-400 is an advanced defense system capable of hitting a wider array of targets,
at longer ranges, and against multiple threats simultaneously. Turkey’s testing
posed a direct threat to the NATO alliance and America’s most exclusive and expensive
air defense program, F-35. Washington since the start has been against the Ankara-Moscow S-400 defense deal worth $2.5
billion, which got brokered in 2017. US administration even tired to stonewall
Turkey from finalizing the deal and instead offered its premium Patriot missile
system. But Turkish President declined the offer as the US refused to transfer its
system’s sensitive missile technology. Russia delivered the first batch,
including four missile batteries, in July 2019, and the week after which the US
formally suspended Ankara from its defense program.
After the direct violation of the NATO clause and threat posed
to the American defense systems, many US lawmakers raised the call for
immediate sanctions against Ankara. US Senator Jim Risch, chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee called the test “unacceptable behavior” from
a NATO ally. In his statement, Risch said that the move posed a direct threat
to the F-35 and other U.S. and NATO allies’ systems.
“U.S. law requires sanctions against countries that
continue to deepen their defense relationship with Russia, and the administration should send a strong signal that Turkey must divest its S-400s,”
he said. U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, said, “Turkey must be sanctioned immediately for its
purchase and use of this system.”
Under the US federal law, Countering America’s Adversaries
Through the Sanctions Act (CAATSA), signed in 2017, the US could have imposed economic
sanctions against Ankara but many wonders why Donald Trump has been so patent
with Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“The administration’s peculiar failure to implement CAATSA
as the law requires is both a moral hazard and in marked contrast with the posture of ‘maximum pressure’ pursued in so many other cases,” explained Thomas
Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
“Erdogan
seems to have made a strategic choice to prefer Russia over the United States
and other NATO allies. There are some hard questions that need to be raised
about just what kind of ally Turkey is, exactly, and the future of Turkey’s
place in NATO,” Karako added.
Comments
Post a Comment