Regional media speculated that Erdogan arrived in Azerbaijan on a mission to coax Aliyev into concessions on natural gas and Karabakh. Neither has occurred. The gas deal got postponed, while Turkey and Azerbaijan played the same broken Karabakh record: Armenia must give up some of the land it occupies before the Turkish-Armenia border can open.
The Turkey-Azerbaijan-Armenia discussions are increasingly reminiscent of the haggling over chairs between adventurist Ostap Bender and theater hand Mechnikov from the iconic Soviet satire "The 12 Chairs:"
Mechnikov: “The money in the morning, the chairs in the evening or the money in the evening, and the chairs next morning.”
Bender: “How about chairs today, money tomorrow?”
Mechnikov: “. . .My soul refuses to accept such terms.”
Turkey, a NATO member, has been one of the U.S.'s top defense industry customers. But could it be serious about buying a new air defense system from Russia or China? That's what Hürriyet Daily News is suggesting. In addition to bids from the U.S. and Italy, Turkey is "taking the Russian and Chinese options seriously":
The Russians earlier were hesitant about whether to bid but decided to go ahead and formally submit their offer when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Moscow and held talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in mid-January, one business official familiar with the issue said. The Russian S300s are seen as an effective system.
The Chinese, meanwhile, are expected to offer the cheapest price and the highest degree of technology transfer, defense analysts said.
As the paper points out, the Russian and Chinese systems wouldn't be compatible with NATO equipment, and either would seem an unlikely choice. But it's worth recalling that two years ago Turkey bought a few S-300s from Russia and said they were just to "simulate threats that may come from countries with ex-Soviet systems in their inventories," namely the Greek Cypriots.
Meanwhile, the big annual American-Turkish Council conference in Washington, which is traditionally a big forum for interaction between Turkish and American defense officials and industry, was cancelled this year because of the row over the Armenian genocide resolution.
Impervious to all threats, except non-binding congressional resolutions
Washington (Reuters) - The aerospace and defense industry is urging House of Representatives lawmakers to reject a measure that would call a World War One-era massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces genocide, warning it could jeopardize U.S. exports to Turkey.
The chief executives of Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co, Raytheon Co, United Technologies Corp and Northrop Grumman Corp issued a rare joint letter, warning that passage of the measure by the House Foreign Affairs Committee could lead to "a rupture in U.S.-Turkey relations" and put American jobs at risk.
"Alienating a significant NATO ally and trading partner would have negative repercussions for U.S. geopolitical interests and efforts to boost both exports and employments," the CEOs warned in a February 26 letter to the committee's Democratic chairman, Representative Howard Berman.
