Turkey Has No Deal With US On Limited Use Of Russian S-400 Missiles - Official

Turkey Has No Deal With US on Limited Use of Russian S-400 Missiles - Official

Turkey and the US are not talking about limiting the use of Ankara-purchased S-400 missiles in return for Washington severing support to Syrian Kurdish militias, a Turkish official said Tuesday

ANKARA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd March, 2021) Turkey and the US are not talking about limiting the use of Ankara-purchased S-400 missiles in return for Washington severing support to Syrian Kurdish militias, a Turkish official said Tuesday.

"We do not have a deal," presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told the Daily Sabah newspaper.

The US news agency Bloomberg cited unnamed Turkish officials as saying last month that Turkey was open to a consensus on the use of Russian air defense systems it purchased in 2019 if the US stopped strengthening Turkish-banned YPG militias near its border in Syria.

Kalin said that an interview in which Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar reportedly said that Turkey could make it so that S-400 installations were not operational all the time was misinterpreted.

The offer models what Greece did in 1997 when it relocated S-300 missiles bought by Cyprus to Crete and then to the mainland, following a backlash from Turkey, its NATO ally.

The US has repeatedly demanded that Turkey abandon S-400s in favor of its Patriot missiles, citing concerns about the Russian weapon's incompatibility with NATO air defense. Ankara has so far resisted, even in the face of sanctions.