Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the United States policy is the “captive of a sick mentality,” in response to a statement made by US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in December describing him as an “autocrat.”
Erdogan said the US prefers to deal with terrorist organizations instead of the rule of law and democracy.
The mentality that ignores terrorist attacks on Turkey, waits impatiently for the result of the coup attempt and embraces all the revolutionaries after their defeat is “a disgrace to democracy,” he added.
Meanwhile, Turkey has announced rejection of US demands to give up the Russian S-400 air defense system as a condition for bolstering relations.
Demands from the US Congress that Turkey gives up its Russian-made air-defense capability before ties can improve is simply not acceptable, Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said in an interview on Saturday.
“Turkey is a sovereign country. We made this decision on the basis of our sovereignty,” he noted.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Kalin affirmed that despite not being active yet, “the activation process of the S-400 system is still going on. There is no reversal of that decision.”
Washington has earlier announced that Turkey has no choice but to return the system to Russia or store it without use.
News has been circulating that Turkey might deploy the system in Libya or Syria, but it seems impossible to do that.
Kalin identified the main issues in the troubling relations as US support to Kurdish YPG forces in Syria and Washington’s refusal to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania whom Erdogan accuses of orchestrating a failed 2016 coup and a US prosecution of one of Turkey’s largest banks.
Head of state conglomerate Rostec Sergei Chemezov said Russia is likely to sign a contract for delivery of an additional batch of its S-400 missile systems to Turkey next year.
