Senior US officials said in a call with reporters this week that Ankara’s purchase of the S-400s and its refusal to reverse its decision left the United States with no other choice.
“The United States made clear to Turkey at the highest levels and on numerous occasions that its purchase of the S-400 system would endanger the security of US military technology and personnel and provide substantial funds to Russia’s defense sector,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.
Turkey’s drift away from its allies in the West, to become an authoritarian state in which women, minorities and dissidents are crushed under the boot of totalitarianism, has been a long process. The regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ruled the country for almost two decades. It has fundamentally changed Turkey from a country that was once an ally of Israel and the US into a country that hosts Hamas and recruits Syrian mercenaries and religious extremists. Turkey had a chance in the early 2000s to become a country of laws and freedoms, to become more like countries in the West. It didn’t need to sacrifice its strength to do that, Israel has also had to deal with the complexities of the region while preserving freedom of the press and rights for minorities and differing sexual orientations. However, in Israel we have a model of balancing rights and the need for security. We have a critical press and gay pride parades. In Turkey, they have dismantled every aspect of freedom they once had. The country is the largest jailer of journalists in the world. Dissidents have been forced to flee or go into hiding and the opposition party has been jailed. People are imprisoned just for tweets that are critical of Erdogan.
The US sanctions are not about these human rights issues. However, history teaches us that countries that begin with suppressing minorities, as the Kurds are suppressed in Turkey, end by launching militaristic wars. Turkey’s trend is similar to fascist states of the 1930s. It began with crushing dissent and minorities and women. It has ended by invading and ethnically cleansing Afrin in Syria, encouraging a war against Armenians and exporting extremists around the region. Turkey is also fanning flames of anti-Israel views, vowing to liberate Jerusalem and hosting Hamas terrorists as if Hamas is a government. Hamas gets more of a red carpet in Turkey than it does in Iran. Like Iran, Turkey supports the murderous terror group.
Turkey ran into sanctions and anger in the US Congress for acquiring Russia’s S-400. Turkey is supposed to be a NATO member, not working with Russia. However, in recent years Erdogan has appeared smiling with Russia’s leader and with Iran’s president. Meanwhile, Ankara threatened US forces and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria, attacking innocent people like activist Hevrin Khalaf. Every step of the way, the S-400 is a symbol of Turkey’s general trend to become an authoritarian anti-American country. It also opposes Israel’s new friends in the Gulf.
US sanctions are a welcome opportunity to have a conversation about Turkey’s destabilizing role in the region. Turkey has inflamed extremists in Syria, undermining the war against the Assad regime by recruiting Syrians to fight against Kurds, Armenians and in Libya. Turkey threatened our partners in Greece and Cyprus. It has even harassed an Israeli ship last year. The IDF and Mossad have both assessed that this is a growing challenge. Turkey has recently appointed a new envoy to Israel who is an anti-Israel extremist and accuses us of massacres and displacing people. Turkey’s new envoy should look in the mirror, it is his country that displaced 300,000 Kurds in Syria and his country that has rained terror on poor innocent women in places like Afrin and Serekaniye, and forced Armenians from their homes. While Israel is a state of diversity and tolerance, Turkey is a state of prisons. The US should keep up the sanctions and isolate Turkey until it changes.