Ankara chooses Chinese firm over US, European firms to co-produce long-range air, missiles defense systems.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said on Thursday that there was an international failure in dealing with the Syrian crisis.
Also Thursday, US Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone said Washington had begun “expert” talks with Turkey to assess the impact of its plans to co-produce the long-range air and missile defense system with a Chinese firm under US sanctions.
“We are seriously concerned about what this means for allied missile and air defenses for us and for Turkey,” Ricciardone said of the Chinese missile defense deal.
Turkey, a member of the NATO military alliance, said in September it had chosen the FD-2000 missile defense system from China Precision Machinery Import and Export Corp, or CPMIEC, over rival systems from Russian, US and European firms.
This comes after a recent report that Turkey’s intelligence head, Hakan Fidan, had disclosed sensitive Israeli and American information to Iran.
While the Turkish government, ruled by the Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party, has turned East in order to revive its Ottoman past, it also has sought to retain good relations with the West. This balancing act has been hard to keep up though as Erdogan has supported policies that counter Western interests.
Erdogan’s government has cooled relations with Jerusalem and the recent Chinese deal and intelligence leak to Iran could mean that the US may be reassessing its relations with Turkey, despite the fact that US President Barack Obama has said he has a close relationship with the Turkish leader.