President Barack Obama has personally warned Turkey’s prime minister that unless Ankara shifts its position on Israel and Iran it stands little chance of obtaining the US weapons it wants to buy. The emerging conflict is reported by the Financial Times. According to the influential daily, "Mr Obama’s warning to Recep Tayyip Erdogan is particularly significant as Ankara wants to buy American drone aircraft – such as the missile-bearing Reaper – to attack the Kurdish separatist PKK after the US military pulls out of Iraq at the end of 2011."
The Financial Times reports one senior administration official as saying that “the president has said to Erdogan that some of the actions that Turkey has taken have caused questions to be raised on the Hill [Congress] . . . about whether we can have confidence in Turkey as an ally. That means that some of the requests Turkey has made of us, for example in providing some of the weaponry that it would like to fight the PKK, will be harder for us to move through Congress.”
It is no mystery hat Washington was quite unhappy when Turkey decided to vote against United Nations sanctions on Iran back in June. Something that was repeated to Erdogan by president Obama when the leaders met at the G20 summit in Toronto, in June. The US president said to the Turkish Prime Minister that the Turks had failed to act as an ally in the UN vote. And he called on Ankara to cool its rhetoric about an Israeli raid that killed nine Turks in the raid against the Gaza-bound flotilla.
The Financial Times adds that the administration official they have spoken to said that Turkish "need to show that they take seriously American national security interests” and underlined that Washington was looking at Turkish conduct and would then assess if there were “sufficient efforts that we can go forward with their request”.
What is a stake, says the Financial Times are the weapons Turkey has been looking to buy from America.
"US law requires the administration to notify Congress 15 days ahead of big arms sales to Nato allies such as Turkey", points out the Financial Times and adds that "although technically such sales can proceed – unless Congress passes legislation to stop them – resistance on Capitol Hill can push administrations to abandon politically unpopular sales."
What makes the sale look at risk, according to the paper is the fact that despite Turkey has sought drones for several years, "its drive has taken on greater urgency both because of the continuing US withdrawal from Iraq and the tensions with Israel, which has provided Ankara with pilotless Heron aircraft". But the American administration has not notified Congress of any big arms sale to Turkey to date this year.
ANF / NEWS DESK
ANF NEWS AGENCY
