Turkey looks at buying Russian Su-57 fighter jets after US F-35 rebuff

Turkey looks at buying Russian Su-57 fighter jets after US F-35 rebuff
The Su-57 is intended to succeed the MiG-29 and Su-27 in the Russian Air Force and match the F-35. / http://russianplanes.net/EN/ID52033, M. Maksimov.
By bne IntelliNews September 2, 2019

Turkey is weighing up the possibility of buying Russian Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter jets as an alternative to US F-35s, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said following talks in Moscow and a visit to an air show with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

As things stand, Nato member Turkey remains indefinitely frozen out of the F-35 development programme and its order for around 100 of the aircraft will not be fulfilled in response to Ankara’s decision to go ahead with the deployment of Russian S-400 advanced missile defence systems—which the US says are a threat to the performance data of the F-35, the world’s most high-tech and expensive fighter jet.

“If the United States maintains its current stance on the F-35s, we will take care of this [via other options],” Erdogan said on August 30 in Ankara after returning from Russia. At the air show, he also viewed Sukhoi Su-35 air defence fighters with a view to a possible acquisition.

“Beyond putting the Su-35 or 57 issue on the table, the issues we are discussing are what measures we can take for our defence industry or defence, and these are certainly aspects being discussed as part of our precautionary packages,” Erdogan said. Turkey’s defence spending strategy also seeks to ensure that the country will in coming years be able to produce its own world-class fighter jets, with Ankara believing the Russians will be more generous in knowhow transfers as part of any sales than Nato allies would be.

Trump meeting
Erdogan added that he would in mid-September meet US President Donald Trump next month at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Erdogan’s words will reinforce concerns that Ankara is aiming to take the ‘Eurasian option’ by strengthening ties with Russia and Iran while remaining a member of Nato.

“The fear in Washington is that this could be a slippery slope from being a difficult ally toward the ‘Eurasian option’ for Turkey in which they’d not formally leave Nato but deepen their ties with Russia and Iran,” Bloomberg quoted Stephen Flanagan, a former special assistant to US presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who now is a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation, as saying.

There is bipartisan support in the US Congress to impose further sanctions on Turkey under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA. But Trump has so far not signed up for sanctions against Turkey. 

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