Turkey has been causing trouble for NATO and its decision to buy S-400 air defence systems from Russia has become another in a drawn-out list of issues, the US ambassador to the bloc said Thursday.
"There are so many issues with Turkey… We’ve never had this kind of trouble, and I think that buying the Russian ballistic missile defence was also another issue on the table," Kay Bailey Hutchison told the Washington Post.
Hutchison said the Turkish-Russian pact, inked last month, was very troublesome with NATO because it fears that Russian surface-to-air missiles will not be interoperable with the bloc’s ballistic missile defence.
The ambassador added things had gone awry in Turkey after last year’s attempted coup, which triggered a clampdown. But she stressed that, all things considered, Ankara remained NATO’s key partner, especially in Afghanistan, and an important Muslim ally.
Russian presidential aide Vladimir Kozhin confirmed in late September an upfront payment from Turkey for S-400s. The delivery is scheduled for 2019, he said, but Ankara wants to move it forward.
