Page 31 - TURKRptMay19

Russia is the largest natural gas supplier to Turkey. It exported 24bn cubic metres of gas to the country last year. This covers almost half of Turkey’s needs.
2.9 US-Turkey relations: Jitters grow as Pompeo, Cavusoglu tangle over accounts of meeting
Market nervousness grew over how tensed relations between Ankara and Washington are set to play out when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo late on April 4 denied that the US had misrepresented or fabricated details about a meeting he held two days previously with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
"Stand by every word of it," Pompeo was reported as saying by CNN in a direct rebuttal to Turkey's claim that a US statement on the meeting "not only fails to reflect the content of the meeting, but also contains matters that were not even raised during the said meeting".
The disharmony in relations between Turkey and the US remains multifaceted but is not—at least not yet—as deep as it was last August when some aggressive tweeting and tariff and sanctions actions from Donald Trump were a big factor in triggering the worst of Turkey’s currency crisis. But the fresh outbreak of tensions comes at a time when recession-hit Turks are on edge as they await whether the Erdogan administration will tolerate the municipal election results that saw it lose five out of the six largest Turkish cities, including Ankara and Istanbul. Another Turkish lira depreciation bout seen before and after the voting has also weighed on sentiment.
Also darkening the picture is the unresolved row over Turkey, despite being a Nato member, refusing to back down from buying Russia’s S-400 advanced missile defence system, which Washington sees as a security threat to the performance data of the F-35 stealth jet fighter—which, US officials have warned, Turkey won’t get its hands on if it sticks with plans to deploy the S-400.
Syria, detained US citizens also among points of contention.
Demonstrating just how many points of contention there are right now between Washington and Ankara, the US State Department said that, during his meeting with Cavusoglu, Pompeo warned against unilateral Turkish military action in Syria, called for the "swift resolution of cases involving unjustly detained US citizens," including local staff from the US consulate in Istanbul, and raised his concerns about Turkey’s planned acquisition of the $2.5bn S-400 surface-to-air missile system.
Cavusoglu was in the US partly to attend events commemorating the 70th anniversary of Nato. Worries that Turkey could be poised to move more into Moscow’s orbit won’t be assuaged by the fact that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—at what’s coming to be seen as a critical moment for him after 17 years leading his country with seeming invincibility—met Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 8 in Moscow.
Erdogan remains defiant over the S-400 purchase.
US officials said little about relations with Erdogan in the week before election day , but on April 1 they were busily briefing, offering both carrots and sticks when it comes to persuading Ankara that it has to drop its order for the Kremlin’s missiles if it seriously expects to get its hands on its ordered F-35s. The US offers a conciliatory tone in public while unnamed sources weigh in with the sticks in anonymous updates given to reporters.
31 TURKEY Country Report May 2019 www.intellinews.com