Turkey is slowly becoming a dictatorship like Russia. That's why the US and EU are very critical towards Turkey. Turkey is also fucking around in Syria fighting against US backed Kurds who where fighting ISIS. And Erdogan is angry at the US for not extraditing "suspects of the coup" and is using anti-Western/US propaganda at home to please his own Muslim constituents. Meanwhile he's also slowly getting BFF's with Russia.
So there is a lot going on, on multiple levels.
Right, I know the backstory on this is deteriorating relationships. I'm talking about this particular weapons deal. Is it the US bluffing and witholding weapons that Turkey wants with the idea that Turkey would rather pull away from Russia that fail to get western weapons? Also Turkey hasn't had a smooth relationship with Russia entirely (e.g. shooting down Su-24 on the Syrian/Turkish border).
Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives released details on Friday of a $717 billion annual defense policy bill, including a measure to temporarily halt weapons sales to Turkey.
Think the idea behind this From US is to put pressure on the rising decline of democracy, massive arrests, purge etc etc. and this weapons deal is the victim of that lawmaking.
Russia and Turkey do have some friction but the SU take down was officially solved last year so the sale of S-400's could take place. Turkey fucking around in Syria isn't necessarily in Syria/Russia's disadvantage. The Kurds are not really on Assad's side so it's Turkey doing Syria's dirty work atm.
Strange. Anyone know what really is going on here? Who benefits from this? Lockheed Martin certainly doesn't want this to happen. The explanation of strained relationship with an ally so let's further strain our relationship doesn't even sound like a plausible cover story.