Summit host Turkey eyes major weapons deals with NATO allies

Next week's NATO Summit in Ankara is expected to showcase Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rising influence within the alliance, as he aims to use the gathering to overcome resistance to crucial arms deals and highlight the rapid growth of Turkey’s defence industry.

Boasting NATO’s second-largest army and sharing borders with flashpoints from Ukraine to the Middle East, Turkey is at the heart of the alliance’s future amid doubts about the United States' commitment to European defence.

“It is a paradigm shift,” says international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.

With European and North American leaders attending the summit, on 7 and 8 July, Bagci predicts Erdogan will use the opportunity to cement Turkey’s pivotal role.

“The NATO summit will be a good instrument for Erdogan to show Turkish domestic politics, as well as international politics, that he is one of the medium-power leaders in the world with whom you have to deal."

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Defence deals

Major arms deals are expected to make headlines at the summit. US President Donald Trump – attending out of what he calls respect for Erdogan – is not likely to come empty-handed.

"The administration is eager to deliver something to Erdogan," says Aaron Stein, president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a US-based think tank.

Trump and Erdogan are expected to sign a $700 million deal for the sale of around 80 GE F-110 fighter jet engines. The sale would be a major breakthrough for Ankara in its ambitious Fifth Generation fighter jet project.

“The Kaan fighter jet, Turkey's domestic fighter, is powered at least in the first iteration by the F-110. And so getting these engines would be important for the development of that fighter,” explained Stein.

Ankara is investing billions of euros into the Kaan jet, but without enough engines critics have mockingly called it the world’s priciest glider. Congressional roadblocks, fuelled by influential Israeli and Greek lobbies, have stalled the engine deal, but Trump has vowed to use executive power to push it through.

“Turkey has become a domestic political football in the United States, kicked around,” says Stein. “The administration wants to push forward on these agreements and is willing to use leverage to do it."

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Ankara is also looking to the NATO summit for a breakthrough in its goal to secure the French-Italian SAMP-T anti-missile system. Until now Paris has blocked the sale, but French media has hinted that an agreement could be within reach.

“That would open maybe a new chapter in European-Turkish relations,” says International relations expert Zaur Gasimov of Istanbul’s Turkish German University.

“That would bring key European members of NATO – France, Italy – closer to Turkey. And would maybe forge a new core group within NATO."

Exclusion from SAFE

Ankara is using the summit to spotlight Turkey’s booming defence industry, showcasing its cutting-edge weaponry and highly coveted drones, used in conflicts from Ukraine to Africa.

“Turkey has quite a developed field of drone production, which is of paramount importance in modern types of warfare,” explains Gasimov. “So all that makes Turkey a very, very special member of NATO from the point of view of European leaders."

However, Turkish arms sales to Europe face a major hurdle: exclusion from the EU’s €150 billion Safety and Assistance for Europe (SAFE) arms procurement programme. EU members Greece and Cyprus continue to block Turkey’s participation in SAFE due to unresolved disputes in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.

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Bagci predicts Erdogan will use his meeting with European leaders to try to break this deadlock.

“SAFE is the grand strategic decision of the European Union, so it cannot be stopped or prevented by such a small country like the southern Republic of Cyprus or Greece. The Greeks and the southern Republic of Cyprus, they have to stop or shut up and not prevent [Turkey’s participation in] SAFE," he says.

Turkey is the only country that recognises the Turkish Cypriot administration in Northern Cyprus, refusing to recognise the Republic of Cyprus as the sole sovereign administrator of the island, as international law does.