RPT: ANALYSIS - Blocked Arms Sales Unlikely To Further Affect Already Stale US-Turkey Ties

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RPT: ANALYSIS - Blocked Arms Sales Unlikely to Further Affect Already Stale US-Turkey Ties

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th August, 2020) Turkey's already complicated relationship with the United States will most likely not be severely affected by the secret blocking of multiple arms sales to Ankara for the past two years by the US Congress, experts told Sputnik, suggesting that other market players would back Turkey with their arms supplies.

It became known on Wednesday that US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch, Ranking Member Bob Menendez, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel and Ranking Member Mike McCaul have blocked the sale of US military equipment to Turkey for nearly two years.

Risch has said that he was not going to support arms sales to Turkey until the issues surrounding Ankara's purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system were resolved.

According to Birol Baskan, a non-resident scholar at the Washington-based middle East Institute, Ankara's fast-growing defense industry will soon allow the country to get on its feet and reduce dependency on the United States.

"Such a step will simply further strengthen Turkey to invest even more in its own defense industry. In the short-to-medium term, however, Turkey might approach other major high-tech producers, such as Russia, China, or South Korea," Baskan told Sputnik.

US-TURKEY RELATIONSHIP AT HISTORICAL LOWS

The scholar suggested that the relationship between Ankara and Washington hit the rock bottom, with US President Donald Trump currently being the only pro-Turkey advocate.

"Relations could have further soured because of the fact that Congress is extremely anti-Turkey and anti- [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan. The Trump administration literally saved the relations from a total collapse. The future of the relations, therefore, depends on the next administration. I do not expect a major change though," Baskan noted.

Similar feelings were shared by Gareth Jenkins, a non-resident senior research fellow with the Joint Center Silk Road Studies Program and Turkey Center at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm, who believes that the new arms sales ban is yet another indication of intensifying anti-Turkey mood in Washington, particularly in the Congress.

"President Trump has so far shielded Turkey from some of the consequences of the hostility towards Erdogan in Washington. But it currently looks as though [candidate Joe] Biden is going to win the presidential election in November, which means that Erdogan will lose the protection he currently receives from Trump," Jenkins said.

According to the senior research fellow, Erdogan cannot do much in light of the current situation, as "the Turkish economy is in deep trouble."

Huseyin Bagci, the president of the Turkish Foreign Policy Institute and a professor of international relations at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, agreed that the US move would not have the desired impact on Turkey.

"Turkey would try to get these arms from the international market," Bagci noted.

Since 2018, the United States has introduced a number of measures to pressure the Turkish government into canceling the Russian S-400 purchase, including removing Turkey from the F-35 aircraft supply chain despite the added costs to the program and to US taxpayers.

The United States has proposed buying the S-400s from Ankara in a bid to break the deadlock. Washington has claimed the S-400 is incompatible with NATO security standards and might compromise the operations of the F-35 jets. Ankara has repeatedly vowed to activate the missile systems, delivered by Russia last summer, despite the US threats of sanctions.

In June, Russia and Turkey agreed in principle on the second shipment of the S-400 air defense system, according to Turkish Defense Industry Secretariat head Ismail Demir. Russia delivered the first S-400 shipment to Turkey in 2019.