DM Monitoring
ANKARA: The United States is currently supporting terrorist organizations much more than expected, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Friday adding that the two NATO allies should be in a very different position.
“We have not experienced such a situation with previous U.S. leaders. Let alone fighting terrorist organizations, the U.S. gives them loads of equipment,” Erdoğan said while answering reporters’ questions following Friday prayers in Istanbul. He added that as a NATO country, Turkey must share these things with the world.
Erdoğan said Thursday he felt that relations with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden had “not gotten off to a good start” since the latter’s arrival in the White House. “My wish is to have friendly and not hostile relations” with the United States, he said. “But the way things are going between two NATO allies is currently not too auspicious,” he added.
The president said he had “worked well” with his previous U.S. counterparts, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
The U.S. primarily partnered with the Syrian offshoot of the PKK terrorist organization, the YPG, in northeastern Syria to fight the Daesh terrorist group. Turkey strongly opposed the terrorist group’s presence in northern Syria and the formation of a terror corridor, which has been a major sticking point in strained Turkey-U.S. relations. Under the pretext of fighting Daesh, the U.S. has provided military training and given truckloads of military support to the YPG, despite its NATO ally’s security concerns.
Ankara has long objected to the U.S.’ support of the YPG, a group that poses a threat to Turkey and terrorizes local people, destroying homes and forcing people to flee. While underlining that a country cannot support one terrorist group to fight another, Turkey conducted its own counterterrorism operations, over the course of which it has managed to remove a significant number of terrorists from the region.
The current course of U.S.-Turkey relations “does not bode well,” Erdoğan also said before departing the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday. In a wide-ranging briefing to Turkish journalists, Erdoğan highlighted divisions between the NATO allies over Turkey’s purchase of a Russian missile defense system and its consequent removal from the U.S.-led F-35 stealth fighter aircraft program.
“I cannot honestly say that there is a healthy process in Turkish-American relations,” the president was reported as saying in the Turkish media. “Look, we bought the F-35s, paid $1.4 billion, and these F-35s were not delivered to us.”
Ties between the NATO allies Turkey and the U.S. were badly strained in 2019 over Ankara’s acquisition of the advanced S-400 Russian air defense system, prompting Washington to remove Turkey from its F-35 Lightning II jet program.
The U.S. argued that the system could be used by Russia to covertly obtain classified details on the Lockheed Martin F-35 jets and that it is incompatible with NATO systems. Turkey, however, insists that the S-400 would not be integrated into NATO systems and would not pose a threat to the alliance. The U.S. also sanctioned some Turkish officials and institutions over the purchase.
