The issue of the procurement of Russian-manufactured S-400 air defense systems was raised during the meeting between Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu with his US counterpart Mike Pompeo in Washington on June 4, Turkish media reported on Thursday, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.
In December, Russia and Turkey signed a loan agreement for supplying S-400 air defense systems to Ankara. US officials have repeatedly said that Washington is seeking to discourage Turkey from contacts with the Russian defense sector, which is a target of US sanctions.
Washington opposed the deal for three main reasons, Hürriyet daily reported. First, the deal went against NATO's plans to further isolate and deter Russia. Secondly, there were concerns that the system’s deployment in Turkey would endanger the flights of NATO aircraft. Lastly, it went against US commercial plans to promote the purchase of US-made Patriot air defense systems.
The main U.S. demand from Ankara was the cancellation of the purchase of S-400s on the grounds that it could trigger sanctions on Turkey.
In August 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) into law. The legislation allows the United States to impose sanctions on entities and individuals that operate on behalf of Russia's defense or intelligence sectors, as well as those engaging in transactions with these sectors.
Turkish officials reportedly rejected Washington’s calls, insisting that these systems would be bought and deployed since the country needed them.
Following the rejection on the purchase of these systems, U.S. officials hinted that "Turkey should not use the S-400s even if it does buy them from Russia."
Ankara, however, expressed its readiness to jointly look into potential consequences of deploying S-400s, stressing that it had chosen a 19-month delivery instead of a quicker option, so that the systems could operate under Ankara’s full control.
"If we had accepted a nine-month delivery option then we would have no control on the use of S-400s. They would be used only by Russian experts, as national software would not be ready to be uploaded. Instead, we have chosen the 19-month option so that we could prepare our technical works and use them under fully Turkish control. We are very sensitive on this," the Turkish officials said during the talks, as quoted by the newspaper's sources.
President Donald Trump reportedly sought to convince his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that Washington was ready to sell Patriots to Ankara, expressing regret that the previous administrations used to put obstacles to such deals with Turkey.
