Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Washington on Tuesday to attend NATO’s three-day summit, where Ankara is expected to prioritize two issues: boosting defense sales and increasing pressure on Kurdish groups it deems terrorists, Ezgi Akin reports from Ankara.
Al-Monitor Daily Briefing 10/07/2024
Weapons sales: Numan Kurtulmus, the speaker of the Turkish Parliament who is part of Turkey’s Washington delegation, made clear that Turkey expects the United States to up its defense sales to its Aegean NATO partner. He called Turkey’s expulsion from the US-led F-35 fighter jet program in 2019 over its purchase of Russian-made missile defense systems “an extremely serious double standard. »
It remains unclear whether Erdogan will meet for a one-on-one with his US counterpart, Joe Biden, on the sidelines of the summit, which marks the Turkish leader’s first visit to the US capital since Biden’s election in 2020.
Just days before the NATO summit, Erdogan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Astana, Kazakhstan, where he praised him as a “dear friend” and the two vowed to deepen cooperation.
All about momentum: Icy US-Turkey relations were on an upward trajectory after Ankara agreed earlier this year to greenlight Sweden’s bid to join NATO. However, Erdogan’s abrupt postponement of a planned visit to the White House in May, reportedly over US support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza, again highlighted the tenuous nature of bilateral ties. Still, as Erdogan looks to recover his country’s ailing economy, his interests will be well served, analysts say, by maintaining solid ties with the United States and European countries, where the Turkish economy is tightly integrated.