President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned down a call by the U.S. to scrap a deal to buy the Russian S-400 missile defence systems, saying Washington should not conflate the issue of Ankara’s procurement of defence systems with the two NATO allies’ cooperation in Syria.
“We asked Western allies for the delivery of air defence systems, but the existing systems were withdrawn let alone giving a new one,” Erdoğan said, referring to the U.S.’s Patriot systems deployed in southern Turkey to protect its borders from threats it says it feels exposed to across the Syrian border.
Erdoğan did not directly point to the U.S. but insinuated that “Turkey’s ally” was trying to convince it to change its mind on the issue of the Russian missile defence systems.