... continuing its ethnic cleansing and illegal settlements. The U.S. Embassy in Athens has justified Israeli-Turkish co-operation with the following words: ‘US military co-operation with Turkey and Israel is a matter of long-standing policy and practice. As a NATO ally and friend with Turkey and as a special ally with Israel, both democracies and key regional players, the United States shares core values and mutual security and political objectives in the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel and Turkey have likewise found that they share ...
... developments in the Black Sea Region generally agree that acceding to NATO was a good idea. For example, the Turkish political scientist Mitat Çelikpala and his Greek colleague Dimitrios Triantaphyllou
state
that “three of the six littoral states are NATO members (Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria) and two others (Ukraine and Georgia) seek to enhance their relationship with NATO.” At the same time, we would like to note that if Çelikpala and Triantaphyllou support the territorial integrity of Georgia and Ukraine ...
... Cyprus, saw it transferred to Crete. Again, Turkish interests took precedence. Russia does, of course, have its red line: when a resolution on the Annan unification plan was discussed in 2004, Russia vetoed it, since the plan as a whole was essentially NATO- (and Turkey-) friendly.
Russian foreign policy is not as a rule aggressive, such as the US’s and Turkey’s. In the case of its relations with Greece, Moscow is happy to watch Greek-Turkish tensions causing problems for NATO, and influence Turkish foreign ...
... offensive in northern Syria. It seems that Turkish president’s cooperation with the NATO’s geo-strategic opponent was more important, than its western allies. It alerts NATO, that it loses one of its key geo-strategic partners, and the absence of Turkey from NATO causes to weaken NATO’s role on the Bosporus. Additionally, Trump’s America another chief member of NATO, unilaterally decided to pull back 2000 troops from Syria, bringing a sudden end to a military campaign that largely vanquished the IS but ...
... in Congress. On October 11, a resolution criticising the position of the US executive on Turkey and the Kurdish issue was drafted by Democrat Eliot Engel, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair. A similar joint resolution was proposed by Democratic Senator Robert Menendez. Turkey’s unprovoked invasion is described in a resolution proposed by Republican Senator Mitch McConnell. At the same time, Congressmen offered several proposals for sanctions against Turkey. In particular, Senator Lindsey Graham proposed Bill S. 2644,...
... claims that Turkey is aware that its relations with Russia are uneven, especially in military and diplomatic terms, therefore, when and where possible, Ankara would like to counteract Russian dominance through soft-balancing, expanding discussions of NATO–Turkey cooperation, for example, in Georgia or Azerbaijan. Russian military build-up in the Black Sea is also causing concerns in Turkey. This claim can be related to the ongoing efforts of the Turkish government to
increase navy capacities
in territorial ...
... Challenges and NATO
, Brussels, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012, p. 2.
10.
Nur Bilge Criss, “Strategic Nuclear Missiles in Turkey: The Jupiter Affair, 1959-1963,”
Journal of Strategic Studies
, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1997), p. 97.
11.
Ian Kearns,
Turkey, NATO and Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons in Europe
, London, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, 2013, p. 3.
12.
Mustafa Kibaroğlu, “Reassessing the Role of U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Turkey”,
Arms Control Today
, at ...
... vehicles, even tanks to a NATO member state, but you will never sell aircraft, warships, air defense systems, because this is not military-technical cooperation, not commerce – this is politics.” Therefore, if Russia succeeds to supply the S-400s to Turkey, it will be a fundamental political breakthrough.
The Americans will do everything to prevent this. The point is that the integration of the Russian systems into NATO’s air defense is technically feasible, but very difficult organizationally, because it is necessary to combine software and allow the Russian systems to penetrate the heart of NATO’s unified air defense system (and this is not only software, ...
... of cooperation and competition (hopefully, not direct confrontation) will be blended by politicians into a single sweet and sour cocktail and offered to the Russian and Turkish public. We will continue to live with numerous paradoxes. For instance, Turkey is a NATO member, but it plans to purchase the most advanced Russian air defense systems (S-400). The two countries actively cooperate on the ground in Syria, but they have very different attitudes to the current Syrian leadership in Damascus. Russians and ...
... precedent when the Chinese won the tender to provide Turkey with anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems. Then the US pressed, and the Turks cancelled the tender’s results. There is an issue with the S-400 now. Despite some of Erdogan’s peculiarities, Turkey is a NATO member state, and the country is not going to quit the alliance. We have to wait and see, but I cannot rule it out that the deal could be annulled at the last moment”, the expert said.
Considering all the circumstances, he is very skeptical about ...
