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meIt seems that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has finally gone too far. At the EU summit, the Europeans have now decided to seek sanctions against the country due to Turkey’s ongoing oil and gas drilling off the coast of Cyprus and Greece. For the president of the United States, Donald Trump, the end of the flagpole has also apparently been reached.
As reported by several US media outlets, the US government wants to quickly implement individual sanctions against Ankara after Turkey put the Russian S-400 air defense system into operation despite vehement warnings from Washington. Erdogan has thus received the red card from Turkey’s most important Western partners.
The United States and Europe depend on individual and specific sanctions. The EU, for example, is considering punitive measures against Turkish companies involved in gas drilling, and also against their ships. They could also affect people involved in illegal test drilling and include entry bans and property freezes. However, so far this is only a declaration of intent, the details will be laid out before March in a report from the EU foreign representative.
However, US measures are much more imminent. As reported by the Reuters news agency with reference to sources in the White House, Trump could impose sanctions this Friday. They are said to be directed against the Ministry of Defense Industry, which reports directly to the Turkish president, and his president Ismail Demir. After the measures planned by the United States were known, the Turkish lira fell rapidly on the stock exchanges. Yet both Europeans and Americans are still reluctant to make Erdogan himself a target for sanctions.
So it’s the week the West lost patience with Turkey and even the otherwise often toothless EU began to show its teeth, albeit hesitantly. Trump, who has some admiration for the autocrat Erdogan, also held back for a long time. But the Americans had warned Turkey for years against acquiring the Russian S-400 defense system because it could offer Moscow important insights into NATO technology.
Turkey acquired the system last year and the Americans then removed it from the list of countries that can buy the modern F-35 stealth bomber from the US In October, the Turks crossed another line when they put the S-system into operation 400. This seems to have upset the long-suffering Trump administration in such a way that it wants to react with sanctions.
Trump apparently also wants to anticipate a corresponding law from the United States Congress so as not to appear as a man driven by MPs. The new defense budget law, which has since been approved by the House of Representatives and has yet to be ratified by the Senate, gives the government 30 days to impose five different types of sanctions on Turkey. Trump now wants to act much earlier.
“Turkish Provocative Activities”
“We are concerned about some Turkish behavior,” US Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said before the meeting of NATO foreign ministers last week. “The idea of establishing a Russian-made air defense system in the middle of our alliance is beyond acceptable limits.”
At the meeting, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Turkish colleague Mevlüt Cavusoglu are said to have had a violent exchange of words. Therefore, Pompeo has asked Turkey to finally act more as an ally.
It looks similar in the EU. “Unfortunately, Turkey resorted to unilateral actions and provocations and increased its rhetoric against the EU, against EU member states and European leaders,” the final declaration of the summit said. “Turkish unilateral and provocative activities in the eastern Mediterranean continue, including in the special economic zone of Cyprus.”
Turkey reacted with a strong rejection of the sanctions announcements and threatened to jeopardize US and European relations with Turkey.
The punitive measures are an expression of the growing frustrations between Europeans and the United States with the Erdogan regime. Not only has it become increasingly repressive and undemocratic internally over the years, the NGO Freedom House has now classified the country as “not free.” Turkey itself has increasingly played a role as the West’s “friend foe”, a hybrid of friend and foe.
For one thing, the country still belongs to NATO and is closely linked to the EU. On the other hand, the Islamist Erdogan has been spreading anti-Western propaganda for many years and often acts more as an antagonist than a friend to the West on crucial geostrategic issues like Syria.
Therefore, the West has been practicing a difficult balancing act for years. Europe still needs Erdogan to stem the flow of refugees into Europe. At the same time, one does not just want to see Turkey destabilize the Mediterranean area, from Greece and Cyprus to Libya, according to a neo-Ottoman claim.
The same applies to Americans. There is a non-partisan consensus in Washington that Erdogan should be put in his place. Due to Turkey’s geostrategically important location on the Bosphorus, they want to prevent Turkey from being driven out of NATO and even into the arms of Moscow.
Erdogan has so far played virtuously on this ambivalence arising out of Turkey’s strategic importance to Europe and NATO, and has increasingly tested the patience of Western partners. But now he seems to have overstimulated his hand.
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