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Where threats to fair election results are concerned, the US is also now not keeping its counsel. "Free and fair elections are essential for any democracy. That means acceptance of legitimate election results, which is essential. We expect nothing less from Turkey, which has a long, proud tradition in this respect,” US State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said at a press briefing.
Ash on April 3 asked the most appropriate question: “Just wondering about US response if the AKP [ruling party of Erdogan] ‘takes’ Istanbul, but still goes on to buy [alternative US missile system] Patriots and F35s.....”
Erdogan officials: refrain from meddling. Palladino’s comments were drawn on by Erdogan officials as a useful tool in pushing their theme that the US is against the president. “We urge all parties, including foreign governments, to respect the legal process and refrain from taking any steps that may be construed as meddling in Turkey’s internal affairs,” Fahrettin Altun, Erdogan’s communications director, said on Twitter in response to the remarks.
Pence steps up warnings to Turkey over refusal to cancel Russian S-400 missile system order. US Vice President Mike Pence on April 3 stepped up the pressure on Turkey over its refusal to scrap an order for Russia’s S-400 advanced missile defence system. In remarks made at a Nato event in Washington, Pence said: “Turkey must choose. Does it want to remain a critical partner in the most successful military alliance in history or does it want to risk the security of that partnership by making such reckless decisions that undermine our alliance?”
Responding to Pence, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay quickly issued his own warning on Twitter, saying: “The United States must choose. Does it want to remain Turkey’s ally or risk our friendship by joining forces with terrorists to undermine its NATO ally’s defence against its enemies?” The reference to “terrorists” presumably refers to Kurdish militias in Syria which, to Ankara’s anger, the US has allied with in the fight against Islamic State.
Ankara expects the first S-400 delivery to take place in July.
Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, in Washington for the 70th anniversary of the Western alliance and a meeting of its foreign ministers, told Reuters in an interview he had spoken several times with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan about the S-400 issue and had discussed it in a meeting with Donald Trump on Tuesday.
While the issue was not formally on the agenda in Washington, he expected it to be addressed.
“I expect that on the margins of our foreign ministerial meeting here in Washington this week, the S-400 issue will be discussed again. Not at the formal agenda, but on the margins when we have the ministers sitting down and looking into whether there’s a way to find a way to find a compromise,” Stoltenberg said.
Bipartisan bill. Four US senators in February introduced a bipartisan bill that would prohibit the transfer of F-35s to Turkey until the US government certifies that Ankara will not take delivery of the S-400 system. Also in April, it was reported that US officials had come to the conclusion that excluding Turkey from the F-35 programme was feasible.
Turkey makes parts of the F-35 fuselage, landing gear and cockpit displays. It has also been tapped to run a regional repair and maintenance depot that would attend to the F-35s owned by other Nato states including the UK.
32 TURKEY Country Report May 2019 www.intellinews.com