NATO Chief Says Turkish Talks for U.S. Patriots Welcome Step

(Bloomberg) -- NATO’s chief welcomed Turkey’s talks with the U.S. for American-made air defense systems, a sign the transatlantic alliance is quietly pushing Ankara to abandon its plan to buy Russian missiles instead.

“Decisions about military procurement are for nations to make,” Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu. But “interoperability of our armed forces is fundamental to NATO for the conduct of our operations and missions.”

Stoltenberg spoke a day before setting off for a two-day visit to Turkey, where he is expected to urge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to back off from a planned purchase of Russian S-400 missiles. That plan is a key source of tension with the U.S., which has threatened to sanction Turkey and expel it from its F-35 fifth-generation fighter jet program.

Washington says the S-400s, if deployed in Turkey, could collect critical information on the stealth capabilities of the F-35, which Turkish companies have helped to develop. As a way out, the U.S. has offered its Patriot systems, and negotiations are proceeding in fits and starts.

But the threat of removing Turkey from a costly fighter jet program or announcing sanctions appears to have done little to persuade Ankara to abandon the S-400s. Turkey is set to take delivery of the Russian equipment by July and has proposed the U.S. and the NATO study how to avoid the risk of compromising sensitive information on the F-35s.

Stoltenberg told Anadolu the alliance has been reinforcing Turkey’s air defenses since 2013. It has deployed Spanish Patriot batteries at Incirlik Air Base and Italian SAMP/T batteries close to an early-warning radar at Kurecik, a critical component of NATO’s ballistic-missile defense. Turkey says those systems are inadequate to cover its air space.

Should Turkey go ahead and purchase the Russian system, the severity of sanctions it might face will depend largely on President Donald Trump, who Ankara says is mulling a visit to Turkey around the time the S-400s are scheduled to arrive.

Erdogan hopes his American counterpart, with whom he enjoys good relations, will fend off stinging sanctions. Turkish officials including his son-in-law, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, remain engaged in a back-door diplomacy with the White House.

“We’ve completed the S-400 deal. It’s a done deal,” Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in Hungary on Friday. “We don’t have to sever our connections with the U.S. because we could not agree on one subject. Trump has the same understanding.”

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.