While the meeting between Turkish President Erdogan and EU representatives on Monday March 9 produced no tangible results, for neither side, Washington seems to be stepping up its appeals to Ankara in an attempt to bring Turkey back to the country. rank, within NATO. After having asked the Europeans to relax their positions and to respond to the Turkish request to reinforce the means of air interdiction over the north of Syria, request rejected by Brussels, the American authorities now propose to authorize export of Patriot systems to Ankara on the sole condition that Turkey undertakes to fail to operationalize its S-400 missile batteries acquired from Russia.
Until now, Washington demanded from Ankara the outright withdrawal of these batteries from the Turkish inventory, on the basis of an incompatibility of the systems with those of NATO, and especially of the fear of seeing the Russian system accumulate valuable information on NATO aircraft during exercises or deployment in the country. Remember that it is also because of the acquisition of these S-400 thatAnkara was excluded from the F35 program this summer. It is therefore a significant relaxation of American positions, since from now on, the Turkish forces could keep their systems.
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