Expert Speak Raisina Debates
Published on Jul 22, 2019
The Russian S-400 missile’s delivery to Turkey highlights the Turkish-American crisis and their ongoing rift with NATO.
Turkey’s juggling act with the US and Russia

The delivery of the first parts of the Russian S-400 anti-missile missile system to Turkey on 12 July has brought the crisis in the Turkish-American relations to a head. This long-simmering problem is intertwined with America’s and Turkey’s policies in Syria, specifically where the latter is responsive to the former, which has resulted in as serious rift within NATO and exposed Turkey to pressure from the Russian government.

Background to the S-400 crisis

By accepting the S-400, Turkey has engaged in a “significant transaction” with a Russian entity blacklisted under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), and will be hit with secondary sanctions. Meanwhile, Turkey has been “suspend” from the F-35 fighter jet programme because, as the White House put it: “the F-35 cannot coexist with a Russian intelligence collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities.” A process has been initiated to formally remove Turkey from the programme, including the F-35 supply chain.

Turkey has been “suspend” from the F-35 fighter jet programme because, as the White House put it, “the F-35 cannot coexist with a Russian intelligence collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities.” A process has been initiated to formally remove Turkey from the programme, including the F-35 supply chain.

There has been significant mirror-imaging from the team around Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a number of whom have believed that the US President Donald Trump can simply refuse to implement the law. (This is something of a turnaround from when it had to be explained to the King of France that the Ottoman Sultan was not a“sole master” who “does as he pleases”, but rather “has to consult.”) In fact, there is little option but to enforce the law. The latitude is in how Trump applies it.

In fairness to Erdogan, it is not his fault alone that he has misunderstood the US policy. Despite consistent statements from US officials over many months warning the Turks what will happen if the S-400 enters Turkey, Trump has gone radically off-script several times. For example, in late June, on the edges of the G20 meeting, Trump blamed the crisis on his predecessor, saying President Barack Obama “wouldn’t let buy the missile that he wanted to buy, which is the Patriot. And then, after he buys from somebody else, he says, ‘Now we’ll sell you the Patriot.’ … I don’t think he was treated fairly.”

As it happens, this timeline is not accurate. Turkey has — twice — rejected offers of NATO-interoperable Patriot batteries, and was offered a better deal economically, too, not to mention one without the current political headache. Ankara turned it down primarily because it was looking for technology transfers that would in effect allow it create an indigenous air defence industry. Turkey first tried to acquire a Chinese system, which was cancelled under US pressure in late 2015, and then signed a deal with Moscow for the S-400 two years later.

With Turkey’s fragile economic situation, the risk of even mild sanctions is serious. America briefly imposed sanctions on two Turkish officials last year over Andrew Brunson, the American pastor who was held by Turkey until October 2018 on charges of conspiring in the July 2016 coup d’état attempt against Erdogan. The sanctions were largely symbolic, but they were enough, in tandem with some tariffs, to create an economic disaster in Turkey that hasn’t fully abated.

Why has Turkey gone with a worse offer from Russia, for a system of dubious efficacy, which deepens this political morass? The short answer is politics.

It should also be noted that the S-400’s billing as the most advanced missile interception system in the world is, at best, unproven. The system has never seen combat. The first state to take delivery of it, China, was distinctly unimpressed. Among other things, a system that is supposed to be able to detect any modern aircraft, no matter its stealth capabilities, cannot. The Chinese conclusion was that the S-400 would be destroyed before it was aware of the presence of an F-22, let alone an F-35.

It can also be added that the record of pre-S-400 Russian air defences, in Syria, is a perfect failure. Moscow’s client, the Bashar al-Asad regime, has brought down one warplane — a Russian one — and earlier this month one of the surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) landed in northern Cyprus. Russia has recently moved two S-400s into Syria; there is no evidence of successful use.

So why has Turkey gone with a worse offer from Russia, for a system of dubious efficacy, which deepens this political morass? The short answer is politics.

A rift in NATO and Russian opportunism

The first political aspect relates to the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey. Because the air defence issue precedes July 2016, it has been somewhat overlooked how intensely Erdogan’s near-death experience aboard a plane that night at the hands of mutinous members of the Air Force and the bombing of the Turkish parliament have affected his thinking. There is every sign he has simply come to believe in a need for air defences in his capital.

Moreover, there is the problem of how Erdogan has interpreted the coup attempt. Erdogan’s intellectual background has made him extremely suspicious of the West and his governance method has exacerbated this problem. As the US ambassador to Turkey noted as early as 2004, Erdogan has “isolated himself from a flow of reliable information,” being surrounded by inadequate, sycophantic advisors (a problem that has gotten much worse since the coup attempt), which means he simply does not understand many events, and in combination with this is “his susceptibility to Islamist theories.”

In the case of the 2016 putsch, Erdogan’s government says — probably correctly — that the Hizmet movement was behind it. The movement’s leader, Fethullah Gülen, is based in the US, and Washington has refused extradition because the Turkish requests do not meet the legal standard. This is interpreted by many in and around Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) as proof that the Gülenists are an instrument of the American (and perhaps Israeli) intelligence services — a theme that appears regularly in Turkey’s pro-government media, as well as throughout the Brunson indictment.

The fact that receiving the S-400 upsets the Americans is, therefore, not considered by all AKP higher-ups to be a wholly negative thing.

The second political aspect relates to Syria, where the US has armed, trained, empowered, and protected the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a separatist organisation at war with Turkey since the 1980s that is on the US’s own terrorism list, in order to combat the Islamic State (ISIS). In August 2016, Turkey took direct action in Syria to push ISIS away from the border and contain the PKK’s maximalist expansionism. A second operation in early 2018 cleared another border pocket of the PKK.

When Turkey moved into Syria, in order to avoid fighting on two fronts it cut a deal with the Russians: Ankara would restrict support to the anti-Asad forces, a key factor in allowing the fall of Aleppo city; in turn, the Russia-Asad-Iran forces would leave the zones Turkey carved out unmolested.

It is unlikely that Turkey will follow through on its renewed threats this week to stage a third anti-PKK incursion, this time into the US-defended zone in eastern Syria. But such things contribute to the deteriorating atmospherics. It is in this space that Russia has found an opening to drive a wedge within NATO.

Turkey remains deeply embittered at being endangered by the US’s support for the PKK — and then misled during resolution efforts. It is unlikely that Turkey will follow through on its renewed threats this week to stage a third anti-PKK incursion, this time into the US-defended zone in eastern Syria. But such things contribute to the deteriorating atmospherics. It is in this space that Russia has found an opening to drive a wedge within NATO.

It is often said Turkey is getting “closer” to Moscow, which is true in the sense that there are more meetings between Erdogan and Russian ruler Vladimir Putin and more Turko-Russian defence connections than there used to be. The relationship is hardly “friendly”, however. Relations between Turkey and Russia have been hostile essentially since the emergence of modern Russia in the sixteenth century, with the exception of a few years in the 1920s when, after the Bolshevik coup, Turkey found Soviet Russia a convenient ally in its independence war against the Western powers. Turkey was a stalwart Western ally in the Cold War, protecting Europe’s southern flank and dispatching troops as far as Korea to resist Communist aggression. Even after the Soviet Union’s demise, Russia continued supporting the PKK within Turkey — and Turkey reciprocated by supporting the Chechen separatists.

Down to the present, Russia continues its active measures to destabilise Turkey domestically, uses its economic leverage — in the energy and tourism sectors — to bully Turkey, and retains its links to the PKK to be used against Turkey as and when it decides. It is more true to describe what has happened to Turkey in Syria, notably engaging in the Russian-dominated “Astana process” with Iran from late 2016, as a loss of influence to, rather than a move towards, Moscow.

The “de-escalation” plan that Astana put in place, ostensibly designed to freeze the war and lower the levels of violence, proved to be a mechanism for managing the pro-Asad forces’ chronic structural weakness so they could liquidate the remaining rebel pockets seriatim. The final pocket, Idlib, is nominally under Turkey’s guardianship. Half the insurgents in Idlib are mainstream rebels under Turkish control, but the zone is dominated by the jihadists of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a derivative of Al-Qaeda. The Turkey-Russia ceasefire arrangement in September 2018 was supposed to see HTS eliminated by Turkey. That was almost certainly never possible and did not happen.

In early May 2019, Russian and Syrian regime forces, using the presence of HTS terrorists as their pretext, began an offensive in Idlib. It is likely that this was not intended to be the final showdown, hence the Iranian promise to keep their ground forces out of it. The intent seems to have been to take another slice of the rebels’ final enclave, this time in the west after the fall of Abu al-Duhur to the east a year earlier. The timing was also probably to allow the Russians to hold over the Turks the prospect of a full-scale offensive that pushed a destabilising wave of hundreds of thousands of refugees and a stream of jihadi terrorists onto their territory if they tried to back out of the S-400 agreement.

In the course of events, the Iranians did not quite stay out of Idlib. Tehran’s less-than-full-force commitment is part of the explanation for the pro-Asad coalition capturing a mere one-percent of “Greater Idlib’s” territory in the last three months. The other part of the explanation is that the Turks decided to open the taps of weaponry to the rebels in Idlib. The shelling of Russia’s Hmaymeem Airbase on the Syrian coast on Wednesday by Turkish-controlled rebels, at least the second time since May, was a highly symbolic slap in the face from Turkey to Russia, and adds to the intermittent drone attacks on Hmaymeem carried out by forces on a very tight Turkish leash.

Conclusion

For all of the activity in Syria over the last few months, the dynamics at play have remained remarkably constant. Iran runs the show on the ground and is determined, as is Asad, to reconquer the entire country by force. The Russian position in Syria is very weak and strategically reliant on Iran, with the corollaries that all efforts by the US and Israel to enlist Russia to contain Iran are futile, and when Turkey sets aside its belief in Moscow’s strength it has much more ability to control events than it has heretofore acted as if it has. If there is an important change, it is that these dynamics are now much more visible.

The American response to the S-400 delivery is the major question going forward. A harsh response — with serious sanctions — would not only damage Turkey and open a potentially insurmountable breach in relations, but it would have serious economic consequences for several European countries, too. A softer response — weaker sanctions and some way to finesse Turkey returning from suspension to the F-35 programme — carries the hazard of rewarding Erdogan’s recklessness.

The American response to the S-400 delivery is the major question going forward. A harsh response — with serious sanctions — would not only damage Turkey and open a potentially insurmountable breach in relations, but it would have serious economic consequences for several European countries, too. A softer response — weaker sanctions and some way to finesse Turkey returning from suspension to the F-35 programme — carries the hazard of rewarding Erdogan’s recklessness. At the same time, an off-ramp that allows reconciliation between the two NATO states would provide some opportunity for a resolution in Syria and seriously set back Russia’s efforts to undermine Western security, among other things.

This is now in the hands of Donald Trump, and therefore defies forecasting. Trump has announced policies on Twitter several times that were a surprise to his own officials, and in this case even the President doesn’t seem to know what he is thinking. Asked in the Oval Office on Thursday about sanctions on Turkey, Trump responded, “We’re not looking at that right now”, before adding: “The previous administration made some very big mistakes with regard to Turkey … So we’re looking at it, we’ll see what we do.”


Kyle Orton is a researcher focused on Syria. He tweets at @KyleWOrton.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.