"Ankara diversify the construction of her defense, and this is her right." RISI expert on deliveries to Turkey F-35 and S-400

Russia announced the readiness to supply Turkey to the Su-35 multi-purpose fighters instead of American F-35 fighters. Earlier, the United States excluded the sale of Turkey of the latest American fighters due to the purchase by the country of Russian S-400 air defense systems. The Insider talked with the leading researcher at the Transatlantic Research Center RISI Sergey Ermakov about whether Ankara would agree to the proposal of Moscow and how the military-technical cooperation of the three countries will develop further.

Obviously, Russia is interested in the development of military cooperation with Turkey and the beginning of supplies to the country of fighters, but for the Turkish side it is a matter of long, scrupulous and detailed analysis. Ankara’s intelligible reaction to the Russian proposal for the supply of fighters is not yet. Comparing the F-35 and Su-35 is incorrect, because these are aircraft of different generations. With an American fighter, you can compare Russian aircraft of the 5th, 4+ generations, for example, the latest Su-57. And I can’t say that the Russian plane is inferior to the American, as Western media presented. Both of these machines are worthy, and the practice of using one or another depends on what tactical and strategic role in the troops is assigned to it.

At the same time, the deployment of S-400 complexes in Turkey can be considered a resolved issue, it is already going on. Ankara diversifies the construction of her defense: to the existing American weapons systems, they quite reasonably add a non-American echeloned air defense system. This is good for allies or bad, but this is her choice. Questions here arise just to the Turkish allies in NATO, who unsuccessfully took the mentor tone. I think that the US strategic mistake was to believe that since Ankara has certain political obligations on NATO block, they will, by definition, will follow their fairway.

The gesture with the refusal to sell Turkey F-35, of course, is political, but in it you can find some military-technical justifications: of course, the United States would not want to show its new fighters to the Russian-made air defense systems. On the other hand, if you look at the same Greece, which, together with Turkey, is one of the oldest NATO member countries, then the expected deliveries of Russian weapons to the country do not cause such a reaction. Therefore, I see here more of Washington's demarche.

I would not exclude the option in which the United States will return to Turkey with a proposal to buy fighters, since Americans, like everyone else, know how to count money. F-35 is the most expensive combat vehicle in history for this class of aircraft. And, of course, the Americans are interested in the fact that their VTS partners buy more than these cars. The United States loses very serious money here, and I think this issue will be resolved in the political plane in the near future through debates, as well as secret and obvious negotiations.