Turkey wants Predators as a gift - Hurriyet Daily
By the time you read these lines, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and U.S. President Barack Obama will have met. Because of the time difference, I was not able to get to hear more about the content. But I was able to learn the inside story of the talks through Turkish and American diplomats walking the corridors with thick files in their hands.
Turkey wants Predator-type drones, and not just the reconnaissance ones but also those that can fire missiles, to fight the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
Another wish is that these be donated by the United States.
The U.S., though, is abstaining from giving an answer.
For such a transaction, a congressional decision is needed. But in these “circumstances,” that is, the tension with Israel, many are pointing to the impossibility that Congress would allow such a sale or grant. Also, they cannot talk in definite terms for the non-missile types either. They don’t want to commit themselves. Moreover, if they are not in the form of sales but as grants, they are even more indecisive.
One of the most important items in the Erdoğan-Obama meeting was going to be this.
For those issues that Obama was going to bring up, it was going to be the dispute with Israel and Syria.
What happened as a result? How were the results? I will be able to write about these in my column tomorrow.
Will the Cyprus crisis accelerate?
Turkey had an unwanted baby.
That is the start of natural gas exploration of Greek Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean.
Ankara is not trying to knock down the platform set up for this purpose or deactivate it through a military intervention. In a tit-for-tat calculation, it will make Turkey Petroleum Corporation, or TPAO, to start exploration almost in the same region by signing a bilateral agreement with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
This development, unavoidably, will accelerate the tension in the region. But the Turkish delegation has an attitude as if it does not take the issue very seriously. The issue was not mentioned too frequently on the plane. Not many questions were asked to the prime minister on this issue. But Cyprus will be on the agenda at the Erdoğan-Obama and Erdoğan-George Papandreou meetings.