Russia has warned against NATO’s possible deployment of Patriot missiles near Turkey’s border with Syria.
Patriot anti-missile batteries installed at the Diyarbakir military airport in southeastern Turkey (AFP Photo / Mehdi Fedouach)
Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said Thursday that Turkey’s request for deployment to the Western military alliance “would not foster stability in the region.”
NATO ambassadors met Wednesday to consider Turkey’s request, which followed weeks of talks between Ankara and NATO allies about how to shore up security on its 900 kilometer border to avoid a spillover from the Syrian civil war.
The alliance’s secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the deployment would augment alliance member Turkey’s air defense capabilities and “would contribute to the de-escalation of the crisis along NATO’s southeastern border.”
Turkey said Tuesday it had found allies who agreed to supply it with an advanced Patriot missile system. Only the United States, the Netherlands and Germany have the appropriate system available. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he had told his country’s ambassador to NATO to approve Turkey’s request.
Turkey’s border villages have been hit by artillery fire from Syria as forces loyal to Damascus battle rebels seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Rasmussen has said that any missile deployment would be a defensive measure to counter mortar rounds, and not to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria. Syrian rebels have called for a no-fly zone as they are almost defenseless against Syria’s air force.
via Russia Opposes NATO Missiles on Turkey-Syria Border.
The Air Defence Missile Squadron 2 with a Patriot missile launcher during an exercise at training site Warbelow near Gnoien, northern Germany. (AFP Photo / Bernd Wustneck)
NATO has confirmed that it received a request from Ankara to deploy Patriot missiles on Turkish territory. The coalition said it would process the appeal soon.
“I have received Turkey’s request for NATO to deploy Patriot missiles. Allies will discuss this without delay,”
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said via his Twitter account.
“The situation along the Syrian-Turkish border is of great concern,” Rasmussen said earlier at a meeting with the European Union’s foreign and defense ministers. “We have all plans in place to defend and protect Turkey if needed.”
The confirmation comes two weeks after Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced that he had requested that NATO install the surface-to-air missiles near the Turkish border with Syria. Prime Minster Recip Tayyip Erdogan later denied that Turkey had made such a request.
Davutoglu said that the missiles were needed to bolster defenses on its border with Syria. The surface-to-air missiles will be able to shoot down aircraft up to 160 kilometers away.
The Patriot is a long-range, all-weather and all-altitude defense system capable of countering tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and advanced aircraft.
Within NATO only the United States, the Netherlands and Germany have Patriot missile systems available.
Reports say Germany has already spoken in favor of the request. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, that he ordered the German Ambassador to Turkey “to positively receive such a request.”
“It would be a serious mistake if we were to refuse defensive support to a NATO member country in a moment when this member country feels that it is exposed to attacks from outside,” he said.
NATO installed Patriot systems by Turkish request two times, during the first and second Iraq wars in 1991 and 2003. The systems, however, went unused and were removed from the country shortly after the wars. In both cases the deployment was carried out by the Netherlands.
via NATO confirms receiving Turkey’s Patriot missile request — RT.
(Reuters) – The Netherlands and Germany may send Patriot missiles to NATO ally Turkey to help defend the country’s border with Syria, Dutch news agency ANP reported on Sunday, citing the Dutch defense minister.
Turkey has said it has intensified talks with NATO allies on how to shore up security on its 900-km (560-mile) frontier with Syria after mortar rounds fired from Syria landed inside its territory.
“NATO does not exist for nothing,” ANP quoted Dutch Defense Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert as saying.
A Dutch Defense Ministry spokesman said: “There is no request but the Netherlands and Germany are the only countries in Europe with Patriots.”
The Dutch minister spoke to her German counterpart last week about a possible deployment, ANP said.
A spokesman for Germany’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday NATO would consider any request from Turkey and confirmed that the United States, the Netherlands and Germany were the countries that had the appropriate Patriot missiles available.
Turkey will formally ask NATO on Monday to set up missiles on its border with Syria due to growing concern about spillover from the civil war in its neighbor, Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Saturday.
NATO has said it will do what it takes to protect and defend Turkey. Turkey has said it is talking to its NATO allies about a possible deployment of Patriot surface-to-air missiles.
NATO ambassadors would have to consider any request from Turkey and they have a regular weekly meeting on Wednesday but they could call a special one at any time. European Union defense and foreign ministers will be in Brussels on Monday for meetings.
(Reporting by Gilbert Kreijger; Editing by Stephen Powell)
via Netherlands, Germany may send missiles to Turkey: report | Reuters.
Syrian jets and helicopters attacked a rebel-held town just feet from the Turkish border, sending scores of civilians fleeing into Turkey. NBCNews.com’s Dara Brown reports.
By NBC News staff and wire services
NATO will defend alliance member Turkey, which struck back after mortar rounds fired from Syria landed inside its border, the alliance’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a meeting in Prague on Monday.
“NATO as an organization will do what it takes to protect and defend Turkey, our ally. We have all plans in place to make sure that we can protect and defend Turkey and hopefully that way also deter so that attacks on Turkey will not take place,” he said.
Rasmussen also welcomed a weekend agreement by Syrian opposition groups to put aside differences and form a new coalition.
In the 20 months since the revolt against President Bashar Assad began, one by one the sleepy Turkish towns and villages along the 550-mile frontier have watched helplessly as the Syrian war edges closer.
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Israel fires into Syria for second day, scores ‘direct hits’
The proximity is no more obvious than in Ceylanpinar, where what was a single town under the Ottoman empire was split after World War I, with part remaining in the new Turkish republic and part coming under French rule in what would become Syria.
Ras al-Ain, as the town on the Syrian side of the frontier is known, was overrun on Thursday by anti-Assad rebels advancing into Syria’s northeast, home to many ethnic Kurds. Fighting has sent thousands of refugees fleeing for safety in Turkey.
No sooner had the rebels raised their flag over Ras al-Ain after a fierce battle, however, than Syrian government tanks and artillery began firing back into the town in what has become an all-too-familiar pattern of the civil war.
Assad’s forces unleashed their air power on Monday. A warplane screeched along the frontier and bombs fell close to the border fence, sending scores more Syrians scrambling over into Turkey. Helicopters strafed targets for a second day.
Turkey does not want to become embroiled in a regional war, but risks being drawn in by domestic pressures. As frustration grows among leaders in Ankara at world powers’ failure to stop the bloodshed, so too are Turkey’s citizens becoming impatient with their own government’s inability to keep them safe.
Walls ‘riddled with bullet holes’
Flat-roofed Syrian and Turkish houses abut the barbed-wire fence that divides the two modern towns, whose combined population is 80,000 and between which Arabs and Kurds have long maintained family and social bonds.
Though crossing the frontier has often been limited by official restrictions, friends and relatives exchange greetings through the wire as though chatting over a backyard fence.
Loitering near the wire is now a risky pastime, however. Kayakiran’s uncle, Mehmet Ali, recalled how close the war came when, after rebels took Ras al-Ain last week, he stepped outside his home in Ceylanpinar to phone a friend over the border.
PhotoBlog: Syrians flee into Turkey after Syrian jet bombs border town
“I wanted to see if he was alive,” he said.
“I was just putting the phone to my ear when the bullet hit right here,” he said, pointing to a street sign nailed to the wall of his house.
The stray bullet, fired from across the fence, left a small dent in the metal panel inches from where his head had been.
“That’s nothing,” said a neighbor joining the conversation. “My wall is riddled with bullet holes.”
Others have been less fortunate; two people in Ceylanpinar were wounded last week by stray bullets fired from Syria, including a teenage boy who was shot in the chest.
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Around 60 miles west along the border, in the Turkish town of Akcakale, five civilians were killed last month when a mortar fired from Syria struck their home.
It was the most serious cross-border incident since the fighting began, spurring Turkish calls for more robust action from world powers, including the possible deployment by NATO of Patriot surface-to-air missiles on the Turkey-Syria border.
Turkey says it has fired back in retaliation, but its calls for a buffer zone to be set up inside Syria have so far failed to gain traction among reluctant Western powers.
As in Akcakale, many of those in Ceylanpinar living near the fence have abandoned their homes for the time being. The neighborhood resembles a ghost town, where Turkish soldiers in trenches train their guns on Syria.
Turkish police trucks armed with water cannons, typically used in the past to suppress the restive ethnic Kurdish population of southeastern Turkey, including Ceylanpinar, now patrol the Syrian border.
Police warn children not to play near the fence. Schools have been closed since last week, and over loudspeakers on Monday authorities urged people to stay indoors.
“We’ve locked our doors and left,” said Huseyin Albayrak, a neighbor living a few doors down from Kayakiran. “I’ve sent my wife and kids to my father further inside the town.
“Turkey needs to do something to protect its people.”
NATO solidarity
According to Al Jazeera, Rasmussen told reporters in Prague on Monday that NATO will stand by Turkey and consider requests for a possible deployment of anti-aircraft missiles.
“Turkey can rely on NATO solidarity, we have more plans in place to defend and protect Turkey, our ally, if needed,” Rasmussen said, according to Al Jazeera.
The NATO secretary-general added that the military alliance had not received a request from Turkey to deploy U.S.-made Patriot anti-aircraft missiles.
“But obviously if such a request is to be forwarded, the NATO council will have to consider it,” Rasmussen added, according to Al Jazeera.
Turkey’s protracted shopping for a long-range air defense system has been a sort of geopolitical bellwether for the country: in addition to considering systems from NATO allies U.S. and Italy, Ankara has been looking at Russian and Chinese options. If it goes for the latter, NATO has reportedly promised to cut Turkey out of its air defense monitoring system. But now it looks like Turkey may be abandoning the purchase altogether, reports Defense News:
Turkey’s highest defense body might decide to indefinitely postpone the country’s $4 billion air defense program, effectively killing it, sources and observers said.
In addition to analysts’ criticism that the long-range air and missile defense system is too expensive, other recent developments have raised questions about the project.
This month, for example, MBDA of Italy, one arm of bidder Eurosam, arranged a tour for several Turkish journalists to observe firing tests at two Italian land and naval installations. Turkish defense authorities at the last minute declined to permit reporters to visit the Italian sites, and MBDA had to cancel the tour.
This led to speculation that the program was going to be canceled or indefinitely postponed.
(Not really germane to the main point, but it’s remarkable that the Turkish government could forbid reporters from visiting Italy to see an Italian company exhibition.)
The problem is that Turkey may not need such a system:
Most analysts say that the system’s $4 billion cost is almost prohibitive; that it would be useless against the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, which fights only with light weapons; and that it would take too long to complete to be of use against Syria.
It’s not clear why those factors may have come to light only now, after years of considering this, and it could be just a feint in what seems to be an elaborate bargaining process. The next meeting of the Defense Industry Executive Committee next meets in December or January, Defense News reports, and could either pick a winner then or defer the program.
via Turkey May Abandon Controversial Air Defense Program | EurasiaNet.org.
U.S. Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff said Turkey and US having intelligence sharing for last five years.
Martin Dempsey, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that there had been times when U.S. sent teams over to do some planning with Turkey; notably on humanitarian zones, ballistic missile defense and also some of Turkey’s counter terror concerns related to an unstable northeastern Syria and the PKK.
In a press conference, Dempsey said, “Admiral Winnefeld, my vice chairman, just returned back from Turkey and had conversations with his counterpart about those things. We’ve been having an intelligence sharing regime with Turkey for about the last five years, and one of the things we’re looking to do now is learn lessons from the last five years, recognize a different situation on Turkey’s southeastern border and see if there’s other things we could do to assist them, as well as to reduce the threat of ballistic missile attack inside Turkey. So it’s a work in progress, and we go and come as we need to have those consultations.”
Turkey is not only a close bilateral partner, they’re part of our NATO alliance, we offer them to share our expertise and also to learn from their experiences, and sometimes they take our offer and sometimes they don’t, he said.
