Ankara’s realignment with Russia will cost Turkey more than it thinks

Excerpt

Washington’s deadline for Turkey to abandon its plans to purchase the S-400 surface-to-air missile defense system from Russia is fast approaching, with little progress. Fiercely defending his purchase of the missile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accelerating Turkey’s strategic shift away from NATO. The costs of this shift are much larger than Turkey’s leaders are willing to admit — and not only on the country’s defense sector, but also its energy sector.

Merve Tahiroglu is a research analyst on Turkey at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow her on Twitter @MerveTahiroglu. Greg Everett is a lawyer for Bass, Berry & Sims in Nashville, Tenn. He previously practiced as an energy analyst and lawyer at the Houston, Texas, office of Latham & Watkins. All opinions are the author’s own. He has served as a foreign law clerk at the Supreme Court of Israel and as a researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasian Energy Futures Initiative. Follow him on Twitter @Greg_Everett.